She laughed. "Oh, to make you angry, of course!"
"But I am not at all angry; I am entirely amused," he said.
They were making their way down the Rue de la Pepiniere in the direction of the Namur Gate. Once outside the walls of the town, the road led through some neat suburbs to the Forest of Soignes, a hugh beechwood stretching for some miles to the south of Brussels, and intersected by the main Charleroi Chaussee. The Forest was almost entirely composed of beech trees, their massive trunks rising up out of the ground with scarcely any underwood to hide their smooth, silvery outlines.
Judith had often ridden in this direction, but this was her first visit to the Forest in springtime. She was enchanted with it, and even Lady Taverner, whose spirits were always low during the first months of pregnancy, was moved to exclaim at the grandeur of the scene. Sir Peregrine, in spite of already having got his uppers splashed by the mud of the unpaved portion of the road, seemed pleased also, though he would not allow the vista to be comparable to an English scene.
For the first mile or two the party remained together, Barbara and Lavisse riding at a little distance behind the barouche, but from time to time pressing forward to exchange remarks with its occupants. Shortly after the Forest had been entered, however, Barbara announced herself to be tired of riding tamely along the road. She waved her whip in a rather naughty gesture of farewell, and set her horse scrambling up the bank of the wood. The Count lingered only to assure Judith of the Impossibility of her coachman's missing the way, saluted, and followed Barbara.
"I do think her the most unaccountable creature!" exclaimed Lady Taverner. "It is very uncivil of her to make off like that, besides being so indiscreet!"
Judith, herself disappointed in this fresh evidence of flightiness in Barbara, endeavoured to give her sister-in-law's thoughts another direction.
It was inconceivable to Lady Taverner that any female who was betrothed to one gentleman could desire a tete-a-tete with another, and for some time she continued to marvel at Barbara's conduct. Judith did not attend very closely to her remarks; she was lost in her own reflections. She could appreciate the cause of Barbara's perversity, but although she might sympathise with that wildness of disposition which made convention abhorrent to Barbara, she could not but be sorry for it. She was more than ever convinced that this spoiled, fashionable beauty would make Colonel Audley a wretched wife. Her imagination dwelled pitifully upon his future, which must of necessity be astormy affair, made up of whims and tantrums and debts; and she could not forbear to contrast this melancholy prospect with the less exciting but infinitely more comfortable life he would enjoy if he would but change Barbara for Lucy.
She was roused from these musings by hearing Peregrine announce a village to have come into view. She looked up; the trees flanking the road dwindled ahead in perspective to the village of Waterloo. A round building, standing on the edge of the Forest, half bathed in sunlight, presented a picture charming enough to make her long for her sketchbook and water colours.
They had by this time covered some nine and a half miles, and were glad to be leaving the shade of the Forest. In a few minutes the village was reached, and Lady Taverner was exclaiming at the size and style of the church, a strange edifice with a domed roof, standing on one side of the chaussee. Opposite, among a huddle of brick and stone-built cottages, was a small inn, with a painted signboard bearing the legend, Jean de Nivelles. There was little to detain sightseers, and after pausing for a short while to look at the church, they drove on, up a gentle acclivity leading to the village of Mont St Jean, three miles farther on.