“I am contrite enough; but you don’t make explanations.”
“No; I don’t explain; and you are to come back as soon as we strike the valley. I always send gentlemen back at that point,” she laughed, and went ahead of him into the narrow road. She guided the strange horse with the ease of long practice, skilfully testing his paces, and when they came to a stretch of smooth road sent him flying at a gallop over the trail. He had given her his own horse, a hunter of famous strain, and she at once defined and maintained a distance between them that made talk impossible.
Her short covert riding-coat, buttoned close, marked clearly in the starlight her erect figure; light wisps of loosened hair broke free under her soft felt hat, and when she turned her head the wind caught the brim and pressed it back from her face, giving a new charm to her profile.
He called after her once or twice at the start, but she did not pause or reply; and he could not know what mood possessed her; or that once in flight, in the security the horse gave her, she was for the first time afraid of him. He had declared his love for her, and had offered to break down the veil of mystery that made him a strange and perplexing figure. His affairs, whatever their nature, were now at a crisis, he had said; quite possibly she should never see him again after this ride. As she waited at the gate she had known a moment of contrition and doubt as to what she had done. It was not fair to her brother thus to give away his secret to the enemy; but as the horse flew down the rough road her blood leaped with the sense of adventure, and her pulse sang with the joy of flight. Her thoughts were free, wild things; and she exulted in the great starry vault and the cool heights over which she rode. Who was John Armitage? She did not know or care, now that she had performed for him her last service. Quite likely he would fade away on the morrow like a mountain shadow before the sun; and the song in her heart to-night was not love or anything akin to it, but only the joy of living.
Where the road grew difficult as it dipped sharply down into the valley she suffered him perforce to ride beside her.
“You ride wonderfully,” he said.
“The horse is a joy. He’s a Pendragon—I know them in the dark. He must have come from this valley somewhere. We own some of his cousins, I’m sure.”
“You are quite right. He’s a Virginia horse. You are incomparable—no other woman alive could have kept that pace. It’s a brave woman who isn’t a slave to her hair-pins—I don’t believe you spilled one.”
She drew rein at the cross-roads.
“We part here. How shall I return Bucephalus?”