"If I lose you now—" he began.
"There can be no question of losing," she interrupted. "Have we not come into our own?"
"But others may dispute our right. There is your cousin, to whom I thought you were engaged; and there is your father."
"Oh, as for Guy—" and she made a gesture. "Father, it is true, may object; but let him. I am satisfied; in the end he will be satisfied also. Why, only the other day I wrote him you were here."
"H'm!" At the intelligence he wheeled abruptly.
Already Justine had turned, and lowering her crop she gave her horse a little tap. The beast was willing enough; in a moment the two were on a run, and as Roland's horse, a broncho, by-the-way, one of those eager animals that decline to remain behind, rushed forward and took the lead, "Remember!" she cried, "you are not to leave me now."
But the broncho was self-willed, and this injunction Roland found or pretended it difficult to obey; and together, through the green lane and out of it, by long, dismal fields of rice, into the roomy squalor of the village and on to the hotel, they flew as though some fate pursued. Justine never forgot that ride, nor did Roland either.
At the verandah steps Mrs. Metuchen was in waiting. "I have a telegram from your father," she called to Justine. "He wishes you to return to-morrow."
"To-morrow?" the girl exclaimed.
"Thorold has learned I am here, and has told," her lover reflected. And swinging from his saddle he aided the girl to alight.