“Do you know I am rather proud of them,” she said.
“He’s a clumsy fellow, the groom; and for the mare, she’s downright wicked,” said Liftore.
“At least neither is a hypocrite,” returned Florimel, with Malcolm’s account of his quarrel with the factor in her mind. “The mare is just as wicked as she looks, and the man as good. Believe me, my lord, that man you call a savage never told a lie in his life!”
As she spoke she looked him hard in the face—with her father in her eyes.
Liftore could not return the look with equal steadiness. It seemed for the moment to be inquiring too curiously.
“I know what you mean,” he said. “You don’t believe my professions.”
As he spoke he edged his horse close up to hers.
“But,” he went on, “if I know that I speak the truth when I swear that I love every breath of wind that has but touched your dress as it passed, that I would die gladly for one loving touch of your hand—why should you not let me ease my heart by saying so? Florimel, my life has been a different thing from the moment I saw you first. It has grown precious to me since I saw that it might be —Confound the fellow! what’s he about now with his horse-devil?”
For at that moment his lordship’s horse, a high-bred but timid animal, sprang away from the side of Florimel’s, and there stood Kelpie on her hind legs, pawing the air between him and his lady, and Florimel, whose old confidence in Malcolm was now more than revived, was laughing merrily at the discomfiture of his attempt at love-making. Her behaviour and his own frustration put him in such a rage that, wheeling quickly round, he struck Kelpie, just as she dropped on all fours, a great cut with his whip across the haunches. She plunged and kicked violently, came within an inch of breaking his horse’s leg, and flew across the rail into the park. Nothing could have suited Malcolm better. He did not punish her as he would have done had she been to blame, for he was always just to lower as well as higher animals, but he took her a great round at racing speed, while his mistress and her companion looked on, and everyone in the Row stopped and stared. Finally, he hopped her over the rail again, and brought her up dripping and foaming to his mistress. Florimel’s eyes were flashing, and Liftore looked still angry.
“Dinna du that again, my lord,” said Malcolm. “Ye’re no my maister; an’ gien ye war, ye wad hae no richt to brak my neck.”