‘Here are your gloves’—he saw she had wrung her habit as well as she could, and he had noted, even in the dusk, the beautiful curves and strong, flexible power of her white hands and wrists—‘there are your gloves; and when you have put them on, the sooner we move forward again, the better for you.’
‘Yes, I am sure of that. I should very soon be chilled to the bone again, if I stood here,’ she said, drawing on her gloves, and feeling a little thrill of pleased excitement and wonder. ‘This is the second time he has come to my help,’ she informed herself, with accurate recollection of the former circumstance.
‘Now shall I help you?’ said Michael, in his coldest, most civil tone, as William led up the horse. He held his hand for her foot, and in a moment she was in her saddle, remarking—
‘Now I shall be not a bit the worse.’
‘Perhaps not,’ said Michael, instinctively speaking with greater dryness and curtness as he began to feel a sense of pleasure and interest in the adventure and the heroine of it. He liked her hardihood; hardy she was, for he knew pretty well that she could not be feeling very warm or comfortable, under the circumstances; and the sousing with cold water, and the shock and danger of the accident would have been, as he well knew, excuse enough for hysteria and nervous attacks, in nine cases out of ten. She was evidently no friend to such demonstrations. He mounted his own horse, and they started, William falling behind, thankfully enough.
‘We shall go as far as the end of this lane together?’ said Eleanor tentatively; ‘but you must not let me take you farther out of your way.’
‘My way is where I choose or need to go,’ replied Michael carelessly. ‘I see your groom has dropped behind, but if you will allow me, I will just tell him to ride on as fast as he can—even he cannot now very well miss the way. He must see your maid, and tell her to have lots of dry things ready for you, and some hot tea or coffee; and then, perhaps, you may escape without harm. Otherwise, I would not answer for consequences.’
‘But——’
‘Oh, of course I will ride home with you,’ he answered to her unspoken objection. ‘It will be all right.’
Eleanor’s high spirit failed to come to her aid.