"You look tired. Why do you ride so late?"
"Oh, I just wanted to give Impulse a gallop. I hadn't time to take her out earlier, and if I let the grooms exercise her they'll spoil her mouth."
Amherst frowned. "You ought not to ride that mare alone at night. She shies at everything after dark."
"She's the only horse I care for—the others are all cows," she murmured, releasing her hands impatiently.
"Well, you must take me with you the next time you ride her."
She softened a little, in spite of herself. Riding was the only amusement he cared to share with her, and the thought of a long gallop across the plains at his side brought back the warmth to her veins.
"Yes, we'll go tomorrow. How long do you mean to stay?" she asked, looking up at him eagerly.
He was pleased that she should wish to know, yet the question embarrassed him, for it was necessary that he should be back at Westmore within three days, and he could not put her off with an evasion.
Bessy saw his hesitation, and her colour rose again. "I only asked," she explained, "because there is to be a fancy ball at the Hunt Club on the twentieth, and I thought of giving a big dinner here first."
Amherst did not understand that she too had her inarticulate moments, and that the allusion to the fancy ball was improvised to hide an eagerness to which he had been too slow in responding. He thought she had enquired about his plans only that he might not again interfere with the arrangements of her dinner-table. If that was all she cared about, it became suddenly easy to tell her that he could not stay, and he answered lightly: "Fancy balls are a little out of my line; but at any rate I shall have to be back at the mills the day after tomorrow."