Infamous wretch!
So much beneath my scorn. —Dryden.
Kate came down to breakfast in her riding habit, and when the meal was concluded, mounted almost gayly; while Mrs. Warren, nearly weeping, awaited the departure of her and Aylesford.
She watched the equestrians till they reached the bend of the pond, when Aylesford, with a low bow and a wave of the hand, parted from Kate; and immediately after both were lost to sight in the forest, he keeping on over the bridge, and she turning to the left.
Kate rode on, with a light heart, talking to Arab, in the exuberance of her feelings, as if he had been a human friend, patting him caressingly, with her right hand, as she spoke. The intelligent beast pricked up his ears, and looked around as if he actually understood her words.
“Let us have a gallop,” she said. “Here is the road where you beat Selim. You remember it—don’t you, old fellow?”
She gave her horse his head, at these words, striking him smartly, and away they went at full gallop.
Her fate hung, at that crisis, on a single thread. If Arab had maintained, for a quarter of an hour, the pace at which he was going, Kate would have passed the ambush prepared for her, at a speed which would have prevented her detection. Could but a warning voice have whispered to her the peril, could but one of those strange presentiments have come which often occur, she would have escaped the danger. But, suspecting no peril, she drew in her horse, as she approached the spring, where the road became rougher, and reduced his pace to a walk.
“Well done,” she said, leaning over him and patting him again, “good Arab.”
Suddenly she felt her bridle seized, and instantaneously the road was filled with strange faces, to the number of at least half a dozen. They were all alike coarse and ruffian-looking. The person who had seized her bridle was the only one who struck Kate as not unfamiliar; but his countenance was artificially blackened; and she could not, therefore, discover when or where she had seen him.
At first she had uttered a slight scream. But this had been occasioned rather by the startling suddenness of the attack, than by the assault itself. In an instant she had recovered her self-possession, when her first act was to strike her spur violently into Arab, and simultaneously to give him his rein, in hopes to shake off the grasp of the stranger.