AT THE TOWERS.
Cecil Viscount Neville rode off at a gallop at first, but presently he pulled the horse up into a walk, for he wanted to think. Something had happened besides his tumble that afternoon to “shake the soul of him,” as Tasso says. The blood was coursing through his veins at racing pace, and his heart was beating violently with a new and strange emotion. It seemed to him that he had been in fairyland.
Just as Doris had taken out the handkerchief and looked at it to convince herself that she had not been dreaming, so he put his hand to the cut on his forehead to help him to realize that imagination had not been playing pranks with him.
He had seen beautiful women; in the language of his world he had had some half-a-dozen of them at least “pitched at his head;” but this one——
He stopped the horse, and recalled her face as it had looked down upon him when he came back to consciousness.
“I thought I was dead and that she was an angel!” he murmured, his face flushing. “There never were eyes like hers! And her voice! And I don’t know her name even! And I may never see her again! I must, I must! And I might have ridden over that beautiful creature—she might have been lying there instead of me!” he shuddered. “I ought to have killed myself, clumsy, awkward idiot! But she forgave me, yes, she forgave me!” and he tried to recall, and succeeded in recalling, every word she had spoken. “I wonder who she is?” he asked himself for the hundredth time. “Why didn’t I ask her her name? No, I remember I could not! I—I never felt like that before, never! I felt actually afraid of her! I’ve half a mind to ride back—would she be angry, I wonder? I didn’t thank her enough. Why, I behaved like a fool! She must have thought me one! I’ll ride back and beg her to tell me who she is. I must know!” and he was about to turn the horse when the clock of the Towers solemnly chimed the hour.
He started and looked at his watch.
“Dinner time,” he murmured, “and it’s a mortal sin to be five minutes late! No matter, I must go back,” and he swung round. Then he pulled up again. “No; she will not like it! It—it will seem as if I were forcing myself on her, and after all her goodness to me! But not to know her name even!” and, with something between a sigh and a groan, he put the horse into a gallop and rode toward home.
Fortunately for the horse, she had struck her knees upon the bank, and was uninjured, for Lord Cecil had—with unusual indifference—quite forgotten her, and it was not until he had ridden into the courtyard of the Towers, and met the surprised stare of the groom who came forward, that he remembered the animal.
“I’ve had a tumble,” he said. “It was my fault, not Polly’s! Give her an extra feed and wipe down,” he added, as he patted her. “She isn’t hurt, I’m glad to say.”