Mary’s riding had been confined to a few lessons shared with Milly at the Brompton School of Equitation, and Milly was urged to make a third on the morrow. Mrs. Wren felt it to be the due of the proprieties that she should do so, but Milly herself, apart from the fact that she was shy of appearing in the Row, was quite convinced that it would not be the act of “a sport” to overlook the ancient maxim, “Two are company, three a crowd.” Therefore the invitation was declined. And this discreet action on the part of Milly gave Fate the opportunity for which it had seemed to be looking for some little time past.
It was about twenty minutes to eleven in the forenoon of a perfect first of June that Jack Dinneford rode up gayly to the flat in Broad Place, leading a horse very likely-looking, but warranted quiet. It was a fair presumption that the guarantee covered the fact of its disposition, since it had made the perilous journey from the jobmaster’s, three doors out of Park Lane, and across the No Man’s Land yclept Hyde Park Corner, that terrible and trappy maze, without a suspicion of mental stress.
Jack’s best hunting voice ascended to an open window of the second story. The complete horsewoman, in every detail immaculate, came on to the little balcony of Number 16, Victoria Mansions.
“What a gorgeous day!”
“A ripper!”
If excitement there was on the side of either, self-mastery concealed it. Yet an inconvenient pressure of emotion was shared by both just then. In spite of a liberal share of self-confidence and a will under strong control Mary could hardly refrain from the hope that she was not going to make a perfect fool of herself. As soon as she beheld the upstanding chestnut below with its slender legs and thin tail, she winged an involuntary prayer to Allah that there were no tricks in its repertory unbecoming a horse and a gentleman. As for Jack, the presence of all the horses in the world would not have excited him. It was not in him to be excited by things of that kind, that is to say, it was part of his religion not to be excited by them; all the same there was a genuine, nay, almost terrible thrill in his heart this morning.
In the course of a rather wakeful night he had made up his mind “to come to the ’osses” in sober verity. To the best of his present information the gods, in the absence of the unforeseen, would discuss the matter privately about twelve o’clock.
“Blanche and Marjorie will have something to look at,” was the proud thought in the mind of the young man as the complete Diana, fit to greet Aurora and her courses, emerged from the Otis elevator and took the front of Broad Place with beauty.
“I wish these clothes were a little less smart, and not quite so new,” was the first thought in the mind of Diana. “I am sure they are both of them ‘Cats,’” was the thought which followed close upon its heels. Until that hour it had never been her lot to harbor such vain companions. This gay spirit to whom the fairies had been kind had always seemed to breathe a larger, a diviner air. Such self-consciousness shamed her; but after all those two with their old habits and their odd perfection were more to blame than she.
Truth to tell, in the last seventeen hours a subtle, rather horrid change had taken place in her. Up till six o’clock the previous evening she had always been nobly sure of herself, regally self-secure. Always when she had measured herself against others of her age and sex she had had a feeling of having been born to the purple. Somewhere, deep down, she had seemed to have illimitable reserves to draw upon when the creatures of her own orbit had forced her to a reluctant comparison. In all her dealings with her peers, she had felt that she had a great deal in hand. But Marjorie and Blanche, whoever Marjorie and Blanche might be, had seemed to alter all that with a glance of their ironical eyes.