“All’s well that ends well,” said Lothair; “and there is no reason why you should not fulfil your intention of going to Blenheim, for here is my carriage, and it is entirely at your service for the whole day, and, indeed, as long as you stay at Oxford.”
“Sir, there requires no coronet on your carriage to tell me you are a nobleman,” said the colonel. “I like frank manners, and I like your team. I know few things that would please me more than to try them.”
They were four roans, highly bred, with black manes and tails. They had the Arab eye, with arched neck and seemed proud of themselves and their master.
“I do not see why we should not go to Blenheim,” said the colonel.
“Well, not to-day,” said the lady, “I think. We have had an escape, but one feels these things a little more afterward than at the time. I would rather go back to Oxford and be quiet; and there is more than one college which you have not yet seen.”
“My team is entirely at your service wherever you go,” said Lothair; “but I cannot venture to drive you to Oxford, for I am there in statu pupillari and a proctor might arrest us all. But perhaps,” and he approached the lady, “you will permit me to call on you to-morrow, when I hope I may find you have not suffered by this misadventure.”
“We have got a professor dining with us to-day at seven o’clock,” said the colonel, “at our hotel, and if you be disengaged and would join the party you would add to the favors which you know so well how to confer.”
Lothair handed the lady into the carriage, the colonel mounted the box and took the ribbons like a master, and the four roans trotted away with their precious charge and their two grooms behind with folded arms and imperturbable countenances.
Lothair watched the equipage until it vanished in the distance.
“It is impossible to forget that countenance,” he said; “and I fancy I did hear at the time that she had married an American. Well, I shall meet her at dinner—that is something.” And he sprang into his saddle.