“It sounds quite inferior,” said Miss Thane. “Did you meet your cousin Ludovic, and Ned, and Abel on your way here?”
“Yes, and when he seized me of course I thought Ludovic was the Headless Horseman!”
Miss Thane was regarding her as one entranced. “Of course!” she echoed. “I suppose you were expecting to meet a headless horseman?”
“Well,” replied Eustacie judicially, “my maid told me that he rides the Forest, and that one finds him up on the crupper behind one, but my cousin Tristram said that it was only a legend.”
“The more I hear about your cousin Tristram,” said Miss Thane, “the more I am convinced he is not at all the husband for you.”
“No, and what is more he is thirty-one years old, and he does not frequent gaming hells or cockpits, and when I asked him if he would ride ventre a terre to come to my deathbed, he said ‘Certainly not’!”
“This is more shocking than all the rest!” declared Miss Thane. “He must be quite heartless!”
“Yes,” said Eustacie bitterly. “He says I am not in the least likely to die.”
“A man like that,” pronounced Miss Thane, “would be bound to say the Headless Horseman was only a legend.”
“That is what I thought, but my cousin Ludovic was not after all the Headless Horseman, and I must admit that I have not yet seen him—or the Dragon which was once in the Forest.”