The colonel glanced sourly at him. Diana laughed with pleasure: "Not at all, Scott! Colonel Curmew and I are old acquaintances, and the resources of sentiment were long ago exhausted between us. Where are you going?"
"Nowhere; I just felt like a gallop. All the chaps are kickin' over the flight, which either isn't goin' to materialize or passed over Sunday and made boobs of the bunch of us. Where are you goin'?"
"Nowhere in particular; come with us. My nerves needed soothing, so I took the colonel along."
"As a tonic or quieter?" asked Wallace so seriously that Diana threw back her pretty head and the woodlands were melodious.
The colonel laughed loudly, too, and began to hate young Wallace with a hatred that passes all understanding.
Wallace turned to her. "What's wrong with your nerves? I supposed you hadn't any."
"I didn't know it either, Scott. Probably I've played with cards and cigarettes too hard. For all the sunshine, to-day has been a gray one for me.... Shall we gallop?"
She launched her horse into a trot, a canter, then into a dead run. Behind her tore the two men through the afternoon sunlight, on, on, until their winded mounts topped the homeward crest of the hill and they looked down on the meadows of Adriutha.
They wended their way down the mountain in silence—Diana, grave and apparently tired; Wallace smiling slightly, and glancing at her from moment to moment; Colonel Curmew pop-eyed, expressionless, curling his mustache with gloved fingers.
He was furious with Diana, with Wallace, with himself. Yet even he could not see how he might have resented the young man's intrusion otherwise than by the lack of cordiality which he had certainly manifested. Besides Diana had invited him to remain with them. Of what low tricks women are capable! Because she knew well enough that he had desired and sought a tête-à-tête.