She was on her way back to the house when she met Clementina, also returning discomfited. Pleased as she was with them, her hostess soon interrupted her ecstasies by breaking out in accusation of Malcolm, not untempered, however, with a touch of dawning respect. At the same time her report of his words was anything but accurate, for as no one can be just without love, so no one can truly report without understanding. But they had not time to discuss him now, as Clementina insisted on Florimel’s putting an immediate stop to his cruelty.
When they reached the spot, there was the groom again seated on his animal’s head, with a new proposition in the sand before him.
“Malcolm,” said his mistress, “let the mare get up. You must let her off the rest of her punishment this time.”
Malcolm rose again to his knee.
“Yes, my lady,” he said. “But perhaps your ladyship wouldn’t mind helping me to unbuckle her girths before she gets to her feet. I want to give her a bath.—Come to this side,” he went on, as Florimel advanced to his request, “—round here by her head. If your ladyship would kneel upon it, that would be best. But you mustn’t move till I tell you.”
“I will do anything you bid me—exactly as you say, Malcolm,” responded Florimel.
“There’s the Colonsay blood! I can trust that!” cried Malcolm, with a pardonable outbreak of pride in his family. Whether most of his ancestors could so well have appreciated the courage of obedience, is not very doubtful.
Clementina was shocked at the insolent familiarity of her poor little friend’s groom, but Florimel saw none, and kneeled, as if she had been in church, on the head of the mare, with the fierce crater of her fiery brain blazing at her knee. Then Malcolm lifted the flap of the saddle, undid the buckles of the girths, and drawing them a little from under her, laid the saddle on the sand, talking all the time to Florimel, lest a sudden word might seem a direction, and she should rise before the right moment had come.
“Please, my lady Clementina, will you go to the edge of the wood. I can’t tell what she may do when she gets up. And please, my lady Florimel, will you run there too, the moment you get off her head.”
When he got her rid of the saddle, he gathered the reins together in his bridle hand, took his whip in the other, and softly and carefully straddled across her huge barrel without touching her.