She counted her forces, and concluded that so long as they all kept together no band of robbers would be big enough or bold enough to attack them.
"Don't leave us, I entreat, dear Lord Lavendale," she urged, as they crossed Esher Common. "We will drive as slow as ever you like, so as not to tire your saddle-horses. Tell those postboys to go slower."
"Have no fear, madam," answered Lavendale gaily. "Our hacks are not easily tired. We will stick by you as close as if we were gentlemen of the road and had hopes of booty."
So they rode cheerily enough towards Fairmile. It was broad moonlight by the time they came to Flamestead Common; a clear, cold, winter moon, which lighted up every hillock and gleamed silvery upon the tiny waterpools.
Durnford had been riding close beside the coach, talking of music and plays with Irene; but as they approached this open ground where the light was clearest, he observed a change in her countenance. Those lovely eyes became clouded over, those lovely lips ceased to smile, and his remarks were responded to briefly, with an absent air.
"Why are you silent, dearest miss?" he asked. Lady Tredgold was snoring in her corner of the carriage, Lavendale was riding on the farther side of the road, and those two seemed almost alone. "Does yonder cold, pale planet inspire you with a gentle melancholy?"
"I was thinking of the past," she answered gravely, looking beyond him towards that irregular ground where flowerless furze-bushes showed black against the steel-blue sky.
"You can have no past to inspire sad thoughts. You are too young."
"One is never too young for sorrow. The memory of a companion I loved very dearly is associated with this spot."
And then she told him the story of her little adopted sister, as she had heard it often from her nurse Bridget—the little fair-haired child who seemed like her own reflection charmed into life—the happy days and evenings they two had spent together, and how death came untimely and snapped that golden thread.