"Well, if you mayn't ride with me, you may drive with Stanistreet."
"I may drive Captain Stanistreet?"
"Certainly not; Captain Stanistreet may drive you."
"We'll see about that," said Mrs. Nevill Tyson as she left the room.
She soon reappeared, enchantingly pretty again in her laces and furs.
It was a glorious morning, the first thin white frost after a long thaw. The meet was in front of the Cross-Roads Inn, about a mile out of Drayton Parva. It was neutral ground, where Farmer Ashby could hold his own with Sir Peter any day, and speech was unfettered. Somebody remarked that Mrs. Nevill Tyson looked uncommonly happy in the dog-cart; while Tyson spoke to nobody and nobody spoke to him. Poor devil! he hadn't at all a pretty look on that queer bleached face of his. And all the time he kept twisting his horse's head round in a melancholy sort of way, and backing into things and out of them, fit to make you swear.
She must have noticed something. They were trotting along, Stanistreet driving, by a road that ran side by side with the fields scoured by the hunt, and Tyson could always be seen going recklessly and alone. He could ride, he could ride! His worst enemy never doubted that.
"It's very odd," said she, "but the people here don't seem to like Nevill one bit. I suppose they've never seen anything quite like him before."
"I very much doubt if they have."
"I think they're afraid of him. Mother is, I know; she blinks when she talks to him."