"Your little boy was thrown, and the pony ran away. I thought it best to bring him home without looking for the pony. He fell with some force against a tree, but I don't think——!"
"Won't you come in?" asked Billy's mother, going down into the rain beside her guest. A great many considerations flashed into her mind, but—"and let me thank you."
The soft voice was so like Billy's. For a moment the Baroness wavered. She looked somewhat wistfully into the hall where the ruddy firelight danced on the old oak furniture, but she gave a little wriggle on her saddle and said lightly and in the voice that jarred, "Thanks! but I'm far too wet. I must go home and change. The boy is wet. I hope the pony will turn up all right," and with that she rode out of the drive.
Billy spent some days in bed with concussion of the brain. He talked constantly of his "dark lady" to the bewilderment of his mother, who had no idea how firmly he was imbued with the notion that his dark lady was the dark lady—"of the sonnets," as he always piously concluded.
As for the lady—when Billy's father went down to the "Moonstone" that very evening in the pouring rain, to thank her for her kindness to his little son, she was declared to be engaged and would see no one.
When Billy's mother went next morning she was told that the Baroness had gone to town the night before. Her servants and her horses followed her, and the hunt knew her no more. She left no address. Mr. Rigby Folaire and Lord Edward inquired her whereabouts in vain. But Billy knew she had "gone back into the sonnets"; for had she not said, as they rode home in the rain that afternoon,
"That is my home of love: if I have ranged
Like him that travels, I return again"?
Billy was sure; and even Billy's father has given up talking about Mary Fitton.
XI
HER FIRST APPEARANCE