"No more there is. He has no more idea of dying really than you have; less, probably. You may break your neck out hunting, and he cannot well break his out of his armchair. When a person has got into such a confirmed habit of living as he has," she concludes, drily, "they find it extremely difficult to break themselves of it."
He smiles.
"After all," she continues, thoughtfully, "since it is wear-and-tear of mind, brain and heart-work, that drives people to the churchyard, I don't see any reason why mere sleeping and eating machines should not go on for ever."
It would be impossible to imagine a more innocent dialogue than the foregoing, would not it? But the interlocutors have involuntarily fallen into a very gentle saunter, as two people that, finding each other's society agreeable, are in no haste to part. With his horse's bridle carelessly thrown over his arm, a small muddy scarlet gentleman strolls along with his face turned with interest towards his companion, who is chattering away to him freely and readily—not as having any particular partiality for him, but as being something young, friendly, compassionate.
This is the picture—invested by twilight with an air of mystery that it would not have worn in daylight—that salutes the eyes of a second and larger scarlet gentleman, splashing home through the puddles on a tired horse. As he passes them, Gerard (for it is he) pulls up his horse into a walk, for he would not have the incivility to cover any woman with dirt, even though the woman in question be a vile greedy coquette, to whose insatiable vanity all men are meat. Then, raising his hat stiffly, he rides on without speaking. As he trots homeward through the dusk, the thought flashes into his writhing heart: "It was an assignation! She arranged it with him on the day he came to call. Damnable flirt! Is not she satisfied with two ruined lives? Is she fool enough to think that Linley will marry her? A nice time of night for a respectable young woman to be out walking with a man she has only seen twice in her life! And I heard her tell Mrs. Blessington the other day that she never went outside the park-gates! Liar! What man was ever deep enough to be up to a woman's tricks? She'll go to the dogs, as sure as fate, if she is left to herself! Pshaw! I daresay she knows the way there already. She is so young; shall I warn her? Shall I speak to her? Not I. Thank God, it is no business of mine!"
"Gerard!" says Linley, as, having passed them, he strikes into a brisk trot—looking as if he were going to his own funeral, and just about to join the cortège. "Certainly being in love don't improve him; he is not half the fellow he was last season."
But Esther, in the moment of his passing them, had caught a glimpse of the eager white anger of his face, and she hardly hears. "I'm afraid Mr. Gerard thought it odd my being out so late," she says, trembling with recollected fear of those altered, wrathful eyes.
"Well, and if he did?" cries Linley, impatiently.
"It is very late," she says, looking round into the dusk; "it must be, by the light. I never noticed how dark it has grown since you overtook me."
"It is no darker than it was before Gerard passed us," he answers, rather nettled.