Even in that moment, as he began to dodge the blows, he could not help but notice that the elfish, gypsyish-looking girl had a fine pair of dark eyes, even though they were at that moment blazing with passion, and that the head, crowned with a mass of dark curls, was well set and dainty, the lips were scarlet and curved like Cupid’s bow, and the brune face like a picture he had once seen in a foreign art gallery, of a Spanish princess—though, instead of the filmy lace dress of the former, this one wore a brown linsey dress, which made no pretense of covering the brown feet and ankles dangling down from it.
Challoner recovered his usual coolness instantly.
“Ah!” he said, backing away from the reach of that strong, belligerent young arm, that could deal such tremendous blows with the twig, “my assailant is a young girl, it would seem; therefore I am unable to defend myself from this uncalled-for attack.”
“Uncalled for!” exclaimed the girl, still more shrilly, for she was thoroughly angry at the stranger; “you provoked it by cruelly abusing your poor horse; I only wish he had reared and thrown you, as you deserved.”
“Thank you,” remarked Challoner, sneeringly and mockingly, but before he could utter the rest of the sentence which was on his lips, the horse, as though he had heard the suggestion and thought the idea a capital one, immediately reared backward with the quickness of motion that unseated his rider in a single instant, and in the next, Raymond Challoner found himself measuring his full length on the greensward, and the animal, freed from his obnoxious rider, had plunged forward into an adjacent thicket, and was lost to view.
CHAPTER XII.
“WHO IS JESS?”
“But at last there came a day when she gave her heart away—
If that rightly be called giving which is neither choice nor will,
But a charm, a fascination, a wild, sweet exultation—
All the fresh young life outgoing in a strong, ecstatic thrill.”