"You are always--the same to me," he said simply. And then: "You are really all of you unhurt? Well, thank God for it! And, Tom, my lad, you know, I suppose, how you came to be in this? I am sure I don't; but I thought it was you when I came up."
"I hope you flayed them!" Tom growled, as they gripped hands. "See, she's barefoot! They hunted us half a mile, I should think."
Sir Hervey looked and grew red. "I did!" he answered. "I think they have learned a lesson. And they have not heard the last of it!" Then the post-chaise, which he had escorted to Beamond's Farm on a fruitless search, came up, and behind it a couple of mounted servants, whose training scarce enabled them to conceal their surprise, when they saw the condition of their new mistress.
Sir Hervey postponed further inquiry. He hurried the two ladies into the carriage, set Tom on a servant's horse, and gave the word. A moment later the party were travelling rapidly in the direction of the Hall. Coke rode on the side next his wife, Tom by Lady Betty. But the noise of the wheels made conversation difficult, and no one spoke.
Presently Sophia stole a glance at Sir Hervey; and whether his country costume and the flush of colour which exercise had brought to his cheek became him, or he had a better air, as some men have, on horseback, it is certain that she wondered she had ever thought him old. The moment in which he had appeared, towering on his horse above the snarling, spitting rabble, and driven them along the road as a man drives sheep, remained in her memory. He had wielded, and grimly and ably wielded, the whip of authority. He had ridden as if horse and man were one; he had disdained weapons, and had flogged the hounds into submission and flight. Now in repose his strong figure in its plain dress wore in her eyes a new air of distinction.
She looked away and looked again, wondering if it really was so. And slowly a vivid blush spread over her pale face. The man who rode beside the wheel, the man whose figure she was appraising was--her husband. At the thought she turned with a guilty start to Lady Betty; but the poor girl, worn out by excitement and the night's vigil, had fallen asleep. Sophia's eyes went slowly back to her husband, and the carriage, leaving the road, swept through the gates into the park.
CHAPTER XXIII
[TWO PORTRAITS]
Tom rubbed his hands in cruel anticipation. "They are coming to the Hall at four o'clock," he said. "And I wouldn't be in their shoes for a mug and a crust. Coke will swinge them," he continued with zest. "He must swinge them, like it or not! It'll be go, bag and baggage, for most of them, and some, I'm told, have been on the land time out of mind!"
He had seated himself on the broad balustrade of the terrace, with his back to the park, and his eyes on the windows of the house. Sophia, on a stone bench not far from him, gazed thoughtfully over the park as if she found refreshment merely in contemplating the far stretch of fern and sward, that, set with huge oak trees, fell away into half-seen dells of bracken and fox-gloves. Recreated by a long night's rest, her youth set off, and her freshness heightened by the dainty Tuscan and chintz sacque she had put on that morning, she was not to be known for the draggled miss who had arrived in so grievous a plight the day before. From time to time she recalled her gaze to fix it dreamily on her left hand; now reviewing the fingers, bent or straight, now laying them palm downwards on the moss-stained coping. She was so employed when the meaning of her brother's last words came tardily home to her and roused her from her reverie.