"Look here," he said; "we're cousins—by marriage. I've some warrant to be officious—and you're alone in a strange land, aren't you?—and all that."
Was it her imagination, or did he drop his voice significantly? Perhaps he was glancing at their first meeting, pitying her as a reed bruised in Lady Henrietta's warlike hands. Perhaps—no, she could not read his expression.
The huntsman straightened his back, and walked stiffly towards his horse. A man who was giving up passed by and gravely took off his hat; she watched him hooking with his whip at the bridle gate. She was afraid that they would all ride off and leave her with Barnaby's kinsman, and his penetrating smile.
"Anyhow," said Rackham, "I'm here if you want backing.... Just let me know if you need any kind of help."
A scream on the hidden side of the spinney beneath them linked up the field, believing in one of the glorious surprises that light up the dragging end of the day. The huntsman pushed right through the misty tangle, calling on his hounds, and the riders disappeared like a swirling river. A minute and they were gone.
The girl listened breathlessly to the thudding of distant hoofs. Her heart beat a little too fast, disturbed by that brief interlude of excitement. She stood quite still until the last gleam of scarlet faded, and the galloping died away, leaving a tremendous quiet. There was no sound at last but the wildfowl, far away on the lake, beginning their sunset chaunt.
Half the household had rushed out to look for hounds, and were returning singly, more or less out of breath, as the girl came home. It was astonishing what a commotion the hunt, in its passing, had awakened in that sad household. Lady Henrietta herself, with a shawl on her head, was in the garden, peering. Her sporting instincts were struggling in her with a kind of rage.
"Tell me who were out," she said. "Oh, of course you can't. But they would know who you are. I am glad they saw you. It would remind some of them—a man is so soon forgotten! To think of them all hunting and fooling just as they used; with him left out—! Did they run from Tilton? I don't suppose a man of them wasted a thought on him till they saw you there. Did they change foxes, Susan?"
She talked on eagerly, answering herself with conjecture as she hurried the girl into the warm house, out of the gathering rain. Macdonald, the butler, was better informed than she, and his mistress seized on him as he slipped in, wiping his brow, short-winded but triumphant. He it was who had holloaed the fox away.
"Come here and tell me all about it," said Lady Henrietta sharply. "—At your age, Macdonald—!"