'Oh no, I don't think so. I know you really prefer the piano with singing to either violin or guitar, but you are harassed over something, a bad case perhaps, and you don't care for music of any kind to-night. Forgive me for teasing a little.'
There was a music in her tones for which he cared! She was standing on the steps with her hands behind her, and having busied himself with the saddle to a degree which he knew was ridiculous, he turned and glanced at her. She was critically examining his work; being able to ride bare-backed at a hand-gallop herself, she understood the points both of horse and accoutrements. He got his look at her, unperceived. It sent the blood from his face. 'How marvellously dear she is to me!' he thought, and was thankful to be able to think it coherently. He still had power over himself when he could frame his knowledge into words. He reasoned over it too. She was plain, she was little—not the ideal woman of his dreams. But his ideal woman had vanished long ago, and in her place—he knew well when—had come Anna Hugo with her heavy-browed, square-jawed face, her unruly mass of coarse dark hair, her deep-set scrutinising eyes, and that play of expression which tantalised him into wanting to know her every thought, because it showed him so many. Preparing to mount he glanced at her again.
This time their eyes met. Hers were eloquent with unembarrassed kindness. His had a distressed look to which self-control gave a hardness unaccountable to her except on the one presumption. He was certainly in trouble. They were friends, she might be able to give a lighter turn to his thoughts.
'Let me walk to the gate with you,' she said. 'I want to hear about your ride.'
He read her like a book and smiled at the artlessness of her arts. Yet how cruel she could be because she thought more for others than of herself! Use had strengthened her original nature by binding its second nature upon her. She arranged, comforted, disciplined, befriended, the whole household at Old Lafer; and he, who knew of what contradictious elements it consisted, knew too that she had lost sight of self in determined efforts to control them to unity and concord. This had made her old for her years, and she unconsciously treated as younger many who were older than herself, a grievance with which he had once charged her. But she had not understood. The knitting of her brows as she puzzled over it made him laugh at last. He told her emotion would have to teach her his meaning, and the question, who would rouse that emotion, had since disquieted himself.
Borlase had been to the Mires to see old Hartas Kendrew. It was a name which clouded Anna's face for a moment, and made him avoid glancing at her as he uttered it. But the next moment she turned to him with the brightest of smiles.
'Did you ever hear of the burying he and his wife once went to?' she said. 'It was when buryings were buryings and finished off with rum. It had poured with rain all day and the waters were out. Jinny and Hartas had to cross a beck. They rode pillion and they were both drowsy, and it was comfortable to know the horse would find its own way home. They forgot the beck would be out, and could not hear its roar for the wind. Suddenly Jinny woke, feeling very cold, and saying "Not a drap more, thank you kindly, not a drap more." They were in the water, and it was the flood at their lips, not another glass of rum.'
'Good Heavens, what a shave! Did they get out?' said Borlase.
'Oh no! both were washed away and drowned.'
'But Hartas——?'