'You might have unhorsed me,' said she, laughing.
She looked very bright and handsome in her riding-habit; the chef-d'œuvre of some London tailor, it fitted her to perfection, and, being of a bright blue colour, suited her brilliant complexion and blond style of beauty. A French writer says, 'There is but one way in which a woman can be handsome, but a hundred thousand in which she can be pretty;' and Mrs. Trelawney had those ways in perfection.
Since his last visit Dalton had not seen her, and many of the speeches she had in her petulance or pride permitted herself to say rankled in his memory, exciting anger, sorrow, and surprise; while she, on her part, had been thinking that she had gone quite far enough in the game she was playing with him—for that she was playing a game we shall ere long show—and had been anxiously hoping he would come to Chilcote Grange at least once more ere the departure of his regiment, of which event she had heard a rumour, but he never came.
There was a little constraint in the manner of both, but being too natural to act, it soon passed off.
'I was just thinking of you, curious to say, when you came flying over that hedge,' said Mrs. Trelawney, with a smile in her bright, bewitching hazel eyes, while the dark lashes that fringed their white lids seemed to flicker. Oh, those wonderful hazel eyes! thought Dalton, as he replied.
'Well, it is said to be always a good point in a man's favour when a pretty woman thinks about him in any way. And what were you thinking?'
'That I was certain we had not seen the last of each other—you remember I said so.'
'It is my last day with the hounds. To-morrow my horses go to Tattersall's. And you have done us the honour of following the field to-day?' he added, as they rode slowly side by side.
'No—I only came to see them throw off, and am now riding home.'
'A pretty mare that of yours, and takes her fences like a bird, Goring told me.'