"He is troublesome sometimes," said Maude; "but I can manage him quite easily."
"Oh, yes," assented Stafford; "he is as quiet as a lamb; but he is highly bred and as highly strung."
As they were starting, Pottinger murmured:
"Don't curb him too tightly, miss."
Maude ignored the warning; and she and Stafford rode out. The rain had ceased, the clouds had passed away, and in the joy of his nearness, her spirits rose, a feeling of triumph swelled in her bosom.
"How little I thought yesterday, even this morning, that we should be riding side by side, Stafford," she said. "How little I thought I should have you back again, my own, my very own! Don't all these months you've been away seem like a dream to you? They do to me." She drew a long breath. "Let us ride across the dale."
"You will find it wet there, had you not better keep to the road?"
"No, no," she said; "Adonis is dying for a gallop; see how he is fretting."
Stafford looked at the horse curiously. He was champing his bit and throwing up his head in a nervous, agitated manner which Stafford had never seen him display before.
"I can't make the horse out," he said, more to himself than Maude.
"Perhaps he'll be all right after a gallop."