“How are you to-day; Mrs. George Godolphin? Excuse my apparent rudeness: I am looking at my horses. If the man cannot keep them within bounds, I must go down myself.”
Maria took her place by the side of Charlotte. The horses looked terrific animals in her eyes, very much inclined to kick the carriage to pieces and to bolt into the Bank afterwards. “Did you drive them here?”
“Nobody else can drive them,” replied Charlotte with a laugh. “I should like to seduce Kate behind them some day when she is at Prior’s Ash: she would be in a fit with fright before we were home again.”
“How can you risk your own life, Mrs. Pain?”
“My life! that is a good joke,” said Charlotte. “If I could not manage the horses, I should not drive them. Did you notice the one I was riding yesterday, when you met me with your husband—a party of us together?”
“Not particularly,” replied Maria. “It was just at the turn of the road, you know. I think I looked chiefly at George.”
“You ought to have noticed my horse. You must see him another time. He is the most splendid animal; down from London only the previous day. I rode him yesterday for the first time.”
“I should not detect any of his beauties; I scarcely know one horse from another,” acknowledged Maria.
“Ah! You are not particularly observant,” returned Charlotte in good-humoured sarcasm. “The horse was a present to me. He cost a hundred and thirty guineas. Those animals below are getting quieter now.”
She withdrew from the window, sitting down on a sofa. Maria took a seat near her. “We had been to see Mrs. Averil yesterday when we met you,” observed Maria. “She is still a great sufferer.”