“I think I can manage this one,” answered Isabey, smiling, “and I mean to risk it. It makes me feel like a soldier once more to be on horseback.”
Colonel Tremaine swung Angela into her saddle, a privilege which Isabey envied from the bottom of his heart, and the three started off.
It was a shining winter morning, and the snow-covered earth glittered in the crystalline light. In many places the roads had thawed, and progress was difficult, but Isabey showed himself able with one hand to manage his steed. Angela, who rode like a bird, looked well on horseback, and Isabey began to believe, as Lyddon did, that some day her girlish charms would develop into real beauty.
When they reached Petworth Church a fair-sized congregation had already assembled. There were among them a few old men and some schoolboys. Of these not one advanced to assist Angela from her horse, but this Colonel Tremaine did with old-fashioned grace. Isabey, meanwhile, managed to swing himself off his horse without much difficulty and limp up the flagged path on the one side of Angela, while Colonel Tremaine was on the other. The coldness toward Angela had in no wise abated since the May Sunday, nine months before, when her marriage to Neville Tremaine had become known, but no one until now had actually refused to speak to her. On this day, however, every eye was averted from her, and even Colonel Tremaine was avoided.
Mrs. Charteris was not at church, but George Charteris was there. He dared not refuse to speak to Angela, but the whole Harrowby party observed him skulking behind the churchyard wall, and keeping out of sight when Angela went into the church and when she passed out so that he might escape speaking to her.
Angela said no word nor did Colonel Tremaine, but both, as well as Isabey, surmised that something had gone abroad concerning her which incensed the people still more against her. She was very far from insensible to the treatment she received and was silent all the way riding home. In the afternoon when, according to her custom, she went into the study to read to Isabey, he saw that she had been weeping, and guessed the cause of it. When he gently alluded to it, Angela burst into a passion of tears and left the room. Isabey clenched his one sound fist and longed to take vengeance upon the people who, as he thought, so cruelly ill-treated this innocent girl. He revolved in his mind the increase of hostility toward Angela and at last determined to go to see Mrs. Charteris and ask her if she could account for it.
Next day, having proved his ability to mount a horse, he asked for his charger of the day before and rode over to Greenhill. He was careful to time his visit so that George Charteris would be studying with Mr. Lyddon; Isabey felt that he could not answer for himself if he should catch sight of the boy that day. When he reached Greenhill he was shown into the old-fashioned drawing-room, and presently Mrs. Charteris sailed in. She sat down on a huge horsehair sofa and made Isabey sit beside her, who, not yet wholly familiar with Virginia manners, wondered whether Mrs. Charteris expected him to make love to her after such a familiarity.
“I have been very busy all day,” she said. “As you have heard, perhaps, all of my house servants have decamped, and with a family of refugee children under ten years of age there is much to be done.”
“I have no house in Virginia in which to entertain refugees,” murmured Isabey. “God be thanked for it!”
“Oh, you wicked, inhospitable creature!” cried Mrs. Charteris. “Do you mean to say that if you had a house and your fellow countrywomen were running away from the Yankees you wouldn’t throw open your house and heart to them?”