Toward the end of their two days' journey through the May woods and meadows, a little barking dog sprung out at them, frightening Kate's thoroughbred until it almost threw her. Kildare struck furiously at the dog, and missed; struck again, leaped from his horse, and pursued it, striking and kicking, so that the terrified creature ran for its life, and Kate cried out, "Stop, Basil, stop. What are you doing? Stop, I say!"
He came back to her, cursing, an ugly line between his brows. "Got away, damn the luck! I almost—Why, Kate! Tears? Oh, good Lord," he laughed, still frowning. "You're as soft as Jacques Benoix!"
She mastered the tears; mastered, too, a strange little fear at her heart, thinking proudly, "He came when I called! He stopped when I called!"
Aloud she said, "It was the sun that made my eyes water. Who is Jacques Benoix?"
He told her about his neighbor, a stranger—"the only gentleman within ten miles of us, so you'll have to be friends with him"—a man so soft-hearted that he would not hunt foxes or rabbits; a man who broke his colts without the whip, and was trying to break a son the same way.
"More fool he, coming up here out of a city and trying to teach us to break colts!"
"Has he a wife?"
Kildare gave his great laugh. "You don't suppose a man as soft as that would have escaped? The woman's sickly—of course! That's why he married her, and that's why he has come up here. Gave up a big practice in New Orleans, they say, because he thought it would be healthier here. So it is! Too damned healthy for him, I reckon! We don't need more than one doctor around Storm, and old Doc Jones has got a corner on the births and deaths already. Yes, Benoix is rather a fool. But he's got his uses. He'll play poker for twenty-four hours at a stretch, and drink—Lord!" said Kildare, admiringly. "I don't know where the little fellow puts it all!"
It was at the next crossroads that they found Benoix waiting; a slender, rather foreign-looking man, very carefully dressed, with a stiff little bouquet of geraniums in his hands. For the first time Kate's direct young gaze met the eyes whose blueness, in their dark setting, was a never-failing surprise to her. They held hers steadily for a moment; it seemed to her that they had already talked together before he spoke.
"I bring to Mrs. Kildare the first fruits from her kingdom," he said, offering the little bouquet.