"Yes, it is all very lovely, isn't it?" she said.
She laid her hand on the folded leather of the carriage hood. Again she looked up.
"It is a good deal to have this—always—your own, to come back to, Richard."
She spoke sadly, almost unwillingly. Dickie did not answer, but he looked down, a certain violence and energy very evident in him, his blue eyes hard, and, in the depth of them, desolate as the sky of a winter night. Calmly, yet in a way desperately, as those who dare inquiry beyond the range of permitted human speech, the young man and woman looked at one another. Lady Calmady's sweet voice, meanwhile, went on in kindly question. Ludovic Quayle's in well-placed, slightly elaborate answer. The near horse threw back its head and the pole-chains rattled smartly.—Honoria's lips parted, but the words, if words indeed there were, died in her throat. She raised her hands, as though putting a tangible and actual presence away from her. She did not change colour, but for the moment her delicate features appeared thickened, as by a rush of blood. She was almost plain. Yet the effect was inexpressibly touching. It was as though she had received some mysterious injury which she was dumb, incapable to express. She let her hands drop at her sides, turned away and walked to the far end of the bridge.
Suddenly Richard's voice came to her, aggressive, curt.
"Look out, Ludovic—stand clear of the wheel."
The horses sprang forward, the grooms scrambled up at the back, and the carriage swung away from the brightness of the open to the gloom of the avenue and up the long hill to the house.
Mr. Quayle contemplated it for a minute or so and then, with an air of amused toleration, he followed Miss St. Quentin across the bridge.
"Poor, dear Dickie Calmady, poor, dear Dickie!" he said. "He attempts the impossible. Fails to attain it—as a matter of course, and, meanwhile, misses the possible—equally as a matter of course. It is all very magnificent, no doubt, but it is also not a little uncomfortable, at times, for other people.—However that trifle of criticism is, after all, beside the mark. Now that the whirlwind has ceased, Miss St. Quentin, may the still, small voice of my own affairs presume to make itself——"
But there he stopped abruptly.