Farquhar was taking an early morning stroll, arm in arm with Lady Jim, when he caught sight of them.
"Look, Di!"
Both of the lovers knew how to walk. Lady Farquhar, watching them, thought she had never seen as fine a pair of untamed human beings. In his step was the fine free swing of the hillman, and the young woman breasted the slope lightly as a faun.
The Englishman chuckled. "You're beaten, Di. The highwayman wins."
"Nonsense," she retorted sharply, but with anxiety manifest in her frown.
"Fact, just the same. He's coming to tell us he means to take our little girl to his robber den."
"I believe you'd actually let him," she said scornfully.
"Even you can't stop him. It's written in the books. Not sure I'd interfere if I could. For a middle-aged Pharisee with the gout I'm incurably romantic. It's the child's one great chance for happiness. But I wish to the deuce he wasn't a highgrader."
"She shan't sacrifice herself if I can prevent it," Lady Farquhar insisted stanchly.
"I 'member a girl who sacrificed herself for a line lieutenant without a shilling to call his own," he soliloquized aloud. "Would have him, and did, by Jove! Three deaths made him Lord Farquhar later, but she married the penniless subaltern."