Christina had colored at last; but, as she colored, the trot of a horse came gratefully to her attentive ears.
"You must think no more about it," she whispered; and her flush deepened.
"You wipe it all out?" he cried eagerly.
"Of course I do."
Her eyes met the dogcart at the bend. Herbert was in it.
"And we start afresh?"
He thought he was to get no answer. She was gazing anxiously at Herbert as the trap approached; as it drew up on the bridge she murmured, "I think we had better let well alone," without looking at Lord Manister. "Herbert, you remember Lord Manister?" she cried aloud in the same breath.
Herbert's look was not reassuring. He was, in fact, disgusted with all present but the groom, and most of all with himself, for being where he was. Nor was he the young man to trouble to hide his feelings, and he showed them now in so black a look that Christina, who knew him, was filled with apprehension. Thanks to Lord Manister's tact, that look did not last. Manister, who had his own impression of young Luttrell's character, and had not to be shrewd to guess the other's attitude toward himself, brought his most graceful manner to bear on the situation. With Tiny Luttrell, during the bad quarter of an hour which he had deserved and now endured, his best manner had not been at his command; but it returned to him with the return of the dogcart, and in time to do him a service. He had hardly shaken hands with Herbert when he asked him as an Australian, and therefore a judge, his opinion of the mare.
The touch would have been too heavy for an older man; but Herbert was barely twenty, and it flattered him to the marrow. Christina was relieved to hear his knowing but laudatory comments on the mare's points. She knew that, despite her brother's aggressive independence, he was susceptible enough to marked civility. This, indeed, he never expected, and he was ever ready to return, with interest, some fancied slight; but Christina had never known him rude to anyone going out of his way to be polite to him, as Lord Manister was doing this morning. She divined that politeness from a nobleman was not less gratifying to Herbert because he happened to have maligned the nobleman with much industry. Herbert's modest desire was to be treated as an equal by all men, and he was now being treated as an equal by a lord. This was all he required to make him reasonably civil, even to Lord Manister. When Manister asked him, almost deferentially, whether the mare could be taken in the photograph, he offered his lordship a place in it too, the offer being declined, but not without many thanks.
"I'm going to help take it," Manister laughed. "Mind you don't move, Luttrell. I'm going to help your sister. Hadn't you better come too, and leave my man alone in his glory?"