The old gipsy’s words flashed into Jean’s mind: “You’m bound together so fast and firm as weddin-ring could bind ’ee,” and her face flamed scarlet.
It was true—at least as far as she was concerned—that no wedding-ring could bind her more firmly to Blaise than her own heart had already bound her.
The instinct to flirt with Burke was in abeyance. It was an instinct only born of heartache and unhappiness, and now that Blaise’s mood was so much less cool and distant than, it had been, the temptation to play with unexploded bombs had correspondingly lost much of its charm.
“Don’t be tiresome, Geoffrey,” she said vexedly. “If only you would make up your mind to be—just pals, I should think much better of you.”
“Then I’m afraid you’ll have to think worse,” he retorted.
Just at that moment they encountered a flock of sheep, ambling leisurely along towards them and blocking up the narrow roadway, and Jean was spared the necessity of replying by the fact that Burke immediately found his hands full, manoeuvring a path for the mare between the broad, curly backs of the bleating multitude.
The drover of the flock was, of course, a hundred yards or more behind his charges, negligently occupied in relighting his pipe, so that no assistance was to be looked for in that direction, and as the sheep bumped against the mare’s legs and crowded up against the wheels of the trap in their characteristically maddening fashion, it required all Burke’s skill and dexterity to make a way through the four-footed crowd.
The chestnut’s own idea of dealing with the difficulty was to charge full speed ahead, an idea which by no means facilitated matters, and she fought her bit and fairly danced with fury as Burke checked her at almost every yard.
They had nearly reached the open road again, and Jean, looking down on the sea of woolly backs, with the hovering cloud of hoof-driven dust above them, thought she could fully appreciate the probable feelings of the Israelites as they approached the further shore of the Red Sea. And it was just at this inauspicious moment that the drover, having lit his pipe to his satisfaction, looked up and grasped the situation.
Guilty conscience not only makes cowards, but is also prolific in the creation of fools, and the drover, stung into belated action by the consciousness of previous remissness, promptly did the most foolish thing he could.