"Not rabidly jealous, I guess."
"The governor's train!" She made him as elaborate an obeisance as the hansom's contracted limits would permit. "And yet you condescend to take the air with humble me."
He laughed joyously.
"I feel like a boy with a holiday," he confessed. "I'm free—free!" He kindled at her suggestion that they make it a holiday in truth, and repeating, "I'm free," gave himself to the spectacle of the street.
Mrs. Hilliard suddenly remembered to be cosmopolitan, and bringing her lorgnon into action, returned stare for stare as their driver threaded his dexterous way through the clattering, glittering maze of four o'clock Fifth Avenue.
With bewildering facility, she named the owners of the great houses—usually striking amiss, though Shelby could not know—and from some little experience with New York horse shows, could recognize an occasional carriage occupant. Her adaptability abashed him, setting her mysteriously apart from the woman whose past had been so intimately linked with his, and not until they tacked across the plaza into the wooded entrance of the park, which somehow suggested Tuscarora, did he pluck up the old sense of comradeship. There were still glittering equipages in plenty, and at every turn benches black with sightseers, for the day was a bit of summer gone astray; but this and that bright-liveried copse or shining pond or meadow cropped by sheep evoked the familiar setting of their other rides without effacing the city towering beyond.
"I guess you were born for this kind of thing, Cora," he broke the silence.
The woman gave a flattered little laugh which tapered to a sigh.
"You, too, were meant for something wider than Tuscarora," she returned; "and you will get it,—get it here, perhaps. The great New Yorkers are usually country-born, you know. You'll find your niche—no small one; find it and fill it; while I—? Ah, well; this isn't the talk for your holiday."
He brushed her sleeve with a light pressure.