“My dear sir, let us at least thank her for an exhibition of the finest tussle I ever saw between man and brute. You certainly have picked up a very uncommon companion, and I’m told all the world envies you her beauty.”
That struck the right note. The cloud thinned somewhat on the proprietor’s brow.
“Why, as to that, the girl’s well enough,” says Sir Harry grudgingly, “and I know a beauty as well as another. But I give you my word, sir, that that horse is manageable—I’ll swear he is!—compared to Mrs. Hart. She’ll have her way, she will, if she dies for it, and kicks up the devil’s dust if she doesn’t. A wife itself couldn’t be more of a termagant. The least we may expect from a woman like that is submission, and I dare assure you—”
But here the culprit came up, slowly undulating with the horse’s tired walk, and looked Mr. Greville over, but took no heed of him.
The feathered hat was somewhere in the park; the sleeve of her habit torn half away by a ripping branch, and a breadth of the skirt hung like a lowered flag. But there was no flag lowered in her eyes, or the lift of her head, though her voice was as wooing as a ring dove’s—soft, fluty, a most remarkable voice, as indeed everything about this young woman was remarkable.
“Oh, Sir Harry, forgive me, I entreat you. I believe ’twas the devil possessed me, but when I saw him going off I must needs tear after him if it cost me my soul alive. ’Tisn’t the guineas. I wouldn’t accept one of them if you threw them at me, but I had to win the bet. Oh, Sir Harry, don’t be hard on me—you that’s the finest horseman yourself in Sussex. You know what it is!”
She drooped toward him sweetly, her eyes caressing him.
“You wouldn’t wish me to be a coward!” she said.
Her hair hung almost to the horse’s fetlock as she stooped, all gold and gloss in the smooth auburn curves. Greville had never seen so long. She might ride like Godiva and be decent. Her eyes—were they violet, blue, or deepest grey? Her beauty amazed the man. It stung like strong drink.
“I’m so tired!” she said with a child’s pout on exquisite lips. “Oh, help me down, Sir Harry.”