“Do you dare me?” with an eager step forward.
“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye! I say, are you sure you can find the Renwood cottage?” he called after her. The answer came back through the clatter of hoofs, accompanied by a smile that seduced his self-possession.
“I shall find it in time.”
For a long time he stood watching her as she raced down the road.
“At my peril,” he mused, shaking his head with a queer smile. “By George, that's fair warning enough. She's beautiful.”
At dinner that night the Honourable Penelope restored the watch to her brother, much to his embarrassment, for he had told the duke it was being repaired in town.
“It was n't this watch that I meant, old chap,” he announced, irrelevantly, to the duke, quite red in the face. “Where did you find it, Pen?” She caught the plea in his eye and responded loyally.
“You dropped it, I daresay, in pursuing Mr. Shaw.”
The positive radiance which followed dismay in his watery eyes convinced her beyond all doubt that her brother's encounter with the tall Mr. Shaw was not quite creditable to Bazelhurst arms. She listened with pensive indifference to the oft-repeated story of how he had routed the “insufferable cad,” encouraged by the support of champagne and the solicited approval of two eye-witnesses. She could not repress the mixed feelings of scorn, shame, and pity, as she surveyed the array of men who so mercilessly flayed the healthy, fair-faced young man with the gentle strength.