‘Then I am sorry to say I shall be in London.’
‘When do you rejoin your regiment?’
‘Oh! I’ve got a month’s leave.’
‘Then why won’t you be at the ball?’
‘Because you won’t promise me the first waltz.’
‘Well—rather than the belles of Minstercombe should—ring their sweet changes in vain, I suppose I must indulge you.’
‘A thousand thanks,’ he said, lifted his hat, and rode on.
My blood was in a cold boil—if the phrase can convey an idea. Clara rode on homewards without looking round, and I followed, keeping a few yards behind her, hardly thinking at all, my very brain seeming cold inside my skull.
There was small occasion as yet, some of my readers may think. I cannot help it—so it was. When we had gone in silence a couple of hundred yards or so, she glanced round at me with a quick sly half-look, and burst out laughing. I was by her side in an instant: her laugh had dissolved the spell that bound me. But she spoke first.
‘Well, Mr Cumbermede?’ she said, with a slow interrogation.