Sylvia looked at him in dumb amazement. Blair’s features were working—he seemed to be asking for something as dear to him as his own children.
“I don’t think you know how much I want this horse,� he said, with furious entreaty in his voice and his eyes. “This horse is worth everything to me, and without him life itself is worth nothing to me, because I am undoubtedly ruined unless I can get a horse to beat Skelton’s Jaybird. Alabaster can do it. I don’t know of any other horse that can. It is not only that I may recoup what I have lost—for I tell you I’d risk my own soul almost on Alabaster’s coming under the wire first with Jaybird—but there is feud between Skelton and me, feud such as you never dreamed of. I hate him, and he hates me.�
Sylvia hesitated for a moment. Blair hung upon her words. She was serious enough now. Her lips moved once or twice as she patted the grass with her foot. Of course, it was all over, that childish romance about Skelton. She was now a young woman nearly out of her twenties, and he was nearing his fortieth birthday; and, besides, she had nothing to do with any rivalry on the turf between him and Mr. Blair, nor did she believe that Alabaster was as certain to carry everything before him as Blair thought. But—but—she recoiled from being the means of a possible defeat to Skelton. She knew well enough that there was great feeling on both sides in these matters between Blair and Skelton, and she knew Skelton to be unforgiving to the last degree. She raised her clear grey eyes to Blair’s face, but the expression on it made her turn a little pale. It was not only fiercely entreating, but it had a menace in it. Blair, indeed, felt a savage impulse to seize this slight creature and actually force her to let him have the horse. But the pity that dwells in every woman’s heart now rose in Sylvia’s. She felt so sorry for him—he had told her he would be ruined if he did not get Alabaster; so, after a few moments, painful on both sides, Sylvia suddenly held out her hand, and said:
“Yes, you may have him.�
Blair seized her hands and kissed them. His face changed to something like what it usually was. Sylvia’s eyes were full of tears; she realised that he was really ruined then, although Blair spoke of Alabaster as destined to prevent it. Blair was so eager, that he had to take the horse home with him. Sylvia walked slowly back to the house through the old-fashioned garden, while Blair, in triumph, rode home, leading his treasure. He made Hilary go with the horse to the stable, while he went in the house. He felt the need of rest—he, this great, strong country squire felt a nervous reaction after the singular excitement of the morning.
“Elizabeth,� he said to his wife, “you accused me of looking at Sylvia Shapleigh too often. Let me tell you something. I never felt an impulse of violence towards a woman in my life until this morning. But when I saw her standing before me so unconcerned and smiling, and making up her mind so deliberately about the horse, I declare to you, I longed to—to seize her and throttle her until she came to her senses and agreed to let me have the horse. There is destiny in this. I wouldn’t so have longed for the creature if there were not something quite out of the usual run of events connected with him.�
Elizabeth looked at her husband and said nothing. How unintelligible is human nature, after all! Here, this man, to whom she had been married fifteen years, suddenly developed an intensity, a savagery, that she had no more suspected than she suspected a whirlpool in the placid river that began its course up in the green marshes and made its broad and shallow way to the sea. And it came to her again and again, Suppose it had been not a horse, but a human being that had aroused this vehement desire of possession? It was enough to make her turn pale.
“And,� continued Blair, with a smile that had something ferocious in it, “I shall beat Skelton again through a woman. Imagine, he might fall in love with Sylvia Shapleigh, and then find that she had furnished me with the means to be revenged on him! Perhaps Sylvia is in love with him, and that’s why she didn’t want to let me have the horse.�
“But he can’t marry, you know, without giving up his wife’s fortune, and that he would be most unlikely to do,� said Elizabeth; and she adroitly got Blair off the subject of Skelton, and Skelton’s plans and his horses, and horses in general, and Alabaster in particular, on to some less exciting topic.