"Why not?" said Julia. "Barnaby can have mine."
A blank pause saluted her speech, and then, with one accord, the women began to acclaim the notion as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. Even Kitty, in her haste to dissipate the impression that Julia's declaration might make on the girl beside her, caught up the idea and made it hers. She flew up and down arranging.
"A bit mediæval, isn't it?" said Kilgour, watching the riders as they struggled with gossamer raiment that sometimes flopped over their heads unassisted, and sometimes clung, entangling them in cobwebs.—"In the days of knighthood we all wore bits of our ladies' clothing."
The Duchess grumbled.
"Pity we can't revive other habits," she said. "There was a useful practice of wringing obnoxious people's necks."
"Poor Julia," said Kilgour. "Don't grudge her her little triumph. She only wants to publish it abroad that it was her own fault she was forsaken."
But the Duchess's brow was grim.
The night was black and starless, and had been still. The villages they passed gave back startled echoes, awakened out of sleep by the rattling of the cavalcade. Susan was tucked in between Kitty Drake and the Duchess, who intended to change to her horse when the race began, and in the meantime was driving them at a smacking pace. She kept her buggy at the head of the procession, and was the first to whisk round a perilously sudden turning that led off the turnpike, and sent them bumping into a field.
In front of them stretched a dim line of country that had darkened into strangeness, puzzling the most familiar eyes. Here and there were flickering lights, like will-o'-the-wisps, luring and warning, indicating danger. And the men were to ride there....
Susan stood up in the buggy, supported by Kitty's arm, straining her eyes to watch the start. She could make out a little; by dint of hard gazing she learnt to distinguish the figures that moved yonder. In the middle of the field an indistinct line of riders were drawn up, waiting.