This was addressed to wet-coated, dissipated rabbit, with a tail like a tuft of white cotton, which little animal started up from its hiding-place at her very feet, and went bounding and scuffling off amongst the heather and furze.
“I wish, oh, how I wish that things would go right,” cried Lucy, with tears in her eyes. “I wish I could do something to make Glynne see that he thinks ten times more about his nasty races and matches than he does about her. I don’t believe he loves her a bit. It’s shameful. He’s a beast!”
There was another pause, during which the larks went on singing, the wood-pigeon cooed, and there was a pleasant twittering in the nearest plantation.
“Poor Glynne! when she might be so happy with a man who really loves her, but who would die sooner than own to it. Oh, dear me! I wish a dreadful war would break out, and Captain Rolph’s regiment be ordered out to India, and the Indians would kill him and eat him, or take him prisoner—I don’t care what, so long as they didn’t let him come back any more, and—”
Pat—pat—pat—pat—pat—pat—pat—pat—a regular beat from a short distance off, and evidently coming from round by the other side of a clump of larches, where the road curved and then went away level and straight for about a mile.
“Whatever is that?” thought Lucy, whose eyes grew rounder, and who stared wonderingly in the direction of the sound. “It can’t be a rabbit, I’m quite sure.”
She was perfectly right; it was not a rabbit, as she saw quite plainly the next minute, when a curious-looking figure in white, braided and trimmed with blue, but bare-armed, bare-legged and bare-headed, came suddenly into view, with head forward, fists clenched, and held up on a level with its chest, and running at a steady, well-sustained pace right in the middle of the sandy road.
It was a surprise for both.
“Captain Rolph!” exclaimed Lucy, as the figure stopped short, panting heavily, and looking a good deal surprised.
“Miss Alleyne! Beg pardon. Didn’t expect to see anybody so early. Really.”