She had put up her hands like good Sir Hugh Calverley of Froissart fame, and had looked so much more effective, or rather affecting, than that dauntless knight could ever have done, that Régis had inwardly surrendered—he was so sorry for his Chevalier—although outwardly he had pooh-poohed the proposal.
Now, as the period of discussion drew to a close, Marguerite began to feel the influence of a factor she had hitherto ignored absolutely—namely, the presence of those torturers called nerves, the gain and livelihood of sapient specialists the world over, who grope among them, fumbling with forces of which they are as truly ignorant as are the greatest physicists of the real potency or impotency of electricity. Her whole being was stretched on the rack of incertitude, of ceaseless questionings of the future; and this is a bad state of affairs. “What is going to happen next?” The wind waltzing along the cliffs sang it to its own gyrations, the great trees of the park, courtesying and bowing to a passing squall, echoed it; the very rustle of her silk and batiste pillow in the depth of the night murmured it slyly in her ear as she settled herself to try and sleep.
One afternoon she had ridden off immediately after the second breakfast, followed by Ireland—who invariably accompanied her as the most important unit of her personal household when she visited anywhere—and was cantering toward the chestnut-woods belonging to Salvières. She was on the thoroughbred English horse that was Pavlo’s special property, a savage-tempered hunter of tender years who had from the first made up his mind to struggle and resist on any and every pretext, whether reasonable or not. He answered—or refused to answer oftener than often—to the mild and misleading cognomen of “Narses”—a name he had no sort of right to, being a fire-eating stallion beautiful beyond compare.
“Narses” was mincing his steps like a dancing-master, his dainty, almost transparent ears erect, but quite demurely so—a trick he had when bent on special mischief—but his rider knew that and was ready for him, which robbed the equine pleasantry of half of its value. At the turning of one broad, shady allée into another “Narses” suddenly “swapped ends” with a violence that would have unseated any less supple equestrienne than the “Gamin”; then began a series of snorts, not to say grunts, testifying to the utmost terror. Marguerite laughed, stretched herself forward, and presented the culprit with a flat-handed box on the side of the neck, which he scarcely felt, excepting in his innermost soul, but he stopped his gruntings; and, strangely enough, suffered himself to be brought face to face with an intimate stable companion mounted by Basil. She had a way with horses, had Marguerite.
The rencontre, unpremeditated by her at least, was not unwelcome, and she smiled up at her kinsman in her old merry way.
“You should not ride that brute!” was his gracious form of greeting, and its masterfulness made her laugh again. “I beg your pardon,” apologized Basil, “but really ‘Narses’ is not a woman’s hack, and I think Régis must be demented if he allows you to do it.”
“And why, pray?” she asked, curtly. “I ride always whatever I please. Besides, ‘Narses’ is not wicked; he is merely playful.”
“Playful, eh? Well, since you are here we might try and gallop to take his playfulness out of him. ‘The Cid’ will steady and chasten him after a fashion, I hope.”
“All right,” she consented, ranging alongside, and with Ireland fifty hoof-beats behind, they proceeded toward the head-waters of the river.
Basil looked more at ease, less absorbed, and altogether more human, as she expressed it to herself. The saddle was his natural place—that was where he was at his best, at any rate; and when they came to the first check in their gallop much ice had fallen to pieces between them.