Baby’s eyes are full of tears now. The young fellow’s voice has such a ring of pathos in it—a ring she has never heard in the voices of Belgravia—but she says nothing, only pulls off the gauntlet from her right hand and holds it towards him.
“Good-bye,” he whispers so incoherently that she doesn’t catch the word, and stooping, Hargreaves fastens his trembling lips on the soft white flesh, when——
The Chesnut has started forward, and, off her guard and terrified out of her senses, his hapless rider loses all presence of mind and clings on as the horse careers madly along.
The rest of the school have turned to the right and disappeared from view. Hargreaves, horror-struck, almost stunned, does not follow for a moment, and only the Chesnut with its helpless burden dashes on and on. Turning sharply to the left he gallops furiously—so furiously that all obstacles give way before him. On and on, on and on! till the gardens are left long behind, and the road by the Park is reached, while the poor pale little rider clings desperately on with all her might and main for dear life.
Suddenly the horse swerves to the right down a narrow street, and losing her hold, the girl falls off.
Pray God that the horror of her fate is over! but no!
The tiny foot is entangled in the stirrup, and for nearly thirty yards the brute drags her along, when all at once he stops dead short, frightened and quivering, and the jerk snaps the stirrup leather in two.
But it is a little too late!
They pick her up, a little white dainty thing. Her hat has fallen off, and her long hair—angels’ hair, as Hargreaves has called it—streams down in such long rich shining waves that it seems to envelop the small slender figure in an armour of burnished gold.
She is not dead—her blue eyes, blue as the sunny sky—are quite wide open, and some one, a slight young fellow, who has just ridden breathlessly up, falls down prone on his shaking knees and looks into them with the poor piteous look of a faithful hound.