"I do, though. Peter offered me the mount, and I've accepted. Oh, for goodness' sake be reasonable, Lucy; it's done now. Come and dress. Where are my things?"
"And you care so little for me as to ride a one-eyed bolting brute in a steeplechase," began Lucy furiously; then suddenly her anger passed, and coming close to her husband she laid her hand on his arm. "Hector, won't you for my sake give this up? It isn't often I ask anything of you, but now I do. Oh, dearest, please—please."
"And have Peter and the rest think I'm afraid? No, thank you."
"Hector, you know you don't care what they think. It's something to do with O'Hagan."
"Perhaps it is, Lucy; he called me 'unsporting' just now, and I'm going to show him I'm not. Once more, please tell me where my things are?"
"Hector, I implore you," began Lucy, and then, seeing his face, stopped. "You won't give this up then," she said, "whatever I say?"
"No; where are——"
"I don't know," she said violently, "and I don't care, find them yourself," and she left him, banging the door behind her as she went off to her room.
Here for an hour she remained, dawdling over her dressing, to the just indignation of Halling, her maid, who also proposed to go racing that afternoon under the escort of the regimental sergeant-major and his wife, and who, for the first time in her experience, found her mistress both trying and inconsiderate, and also for the first time sympathised with her master, stamping up and down the verandah outside.
At length, just as Hector had made up his mind to send for a horse and ride on without her, she emerged from her seclusion, and coldly asking him if he meant to come to the races that afternoon entered the waiting buggy, seized the reins, and drove off, Hector scrambling in after her. In silence they rattled down the broad mall, Lucy looking straight ahead and declining to answer Hector when he spoke, and after some narrow escapes from collision with passing gharries—for the lady was not driving with her customary skill—arrived on the scene of action.