"May I ride by your side as far as the Park gates? I am quite alone—my husband is dining with the Hussars at Kelvick."
"I shall be happy to escort you, Lady Saunderson," he answers stiffly.
"Dear, dear!" cries Pauline, with a free careless laugh. "So we are riding the high horse still! Get down, Jack, get down; the animal does not suit you in the least. Get down, and let us be friends again. I always liked you, Jack—always."
"We need not try to analyze the nature of your attachment, Lady Saunderson. I think I ought to understand it perfectly now."
"I doubt if you do," she says, with a slight break in her voice, her small gloved hand caressing his horse's steaming shoulder. "You never judged me fairly, Everard. With you I was always either an angel or an offspring of Jezebel, whereas I am but just something of an ambitious, selfish, yet not wholly heartless woman. It—it cost me a pang, I can tell you, to treat you as I did. But something told me I should not make you happy, or you me; and I am more sure of it even now than I was then. And you, dear boy, is it not so with you?" she asks, leaning forward until her breath fans his face, her great dark eyes, half wistful, half contemptuous, lifted to his averted ones. "Have you not learned to thank Providence for your escape?"
"Yes, Pauline," he answers gravely, "I have indeed—and from my heart."
"Good boy, good boy. So we can cry quits. Give me your hand. What? Are you afraid to touch me? What harm can I do you, Jack? You have sowed your wild oats, and I am a respectable British matron; we—we couldn't flirt now even if we tried, could we? But we could be friends and comforting neighbors, and sometimes, in the long winter evenings ahead, if you should feel the sanctity of your fireside a little overpowering, if the flannel petticoats, the soup-societies, the cardinal virtues, should prove a little oppressive, why, you could steal up to me and distend your lungs with the breath of frivolity, freedom, and—"
"Lady Saunderson," he says huskily, struggling to resist the spell she is weaving about him, "I—I do not understand what you mean."
"No? Then come up to the Park and dine with me to-night, and I'll tell you. We—we can't flirt, you know; but we can sit and watch the young moon rise from behind Broom Hill while we talk over the giddy days of our youth. My husband will be so glad to see you; he is most anxious that we should be friends, and would even go the length of offering you an apology for past unpleasantness, only he does not know how you would receive it. Come, Jack—come!"