Wilfrid Cumbermede

‘Perhaps. I will go on till it does, though.’

While we talked, Clara had followed her father, and was now patting my mare’s neck with a nice, plump, fair-fingered hand. The creature stood with her arched neck and small head turned lovingly towards her.

‘What a nice white thing you have got to ride!’ she said. ‘I hope it is your own.’

‘Why do you hope that?’ I asked.

‘Because it’s best to ride your own horse, isn’t it?’ she answered, looking up naïvely.

‘Would you like to ride her? I believe she has carried a lady, though not since she came into my possession.’

Instead of answering me, she looked round at her father, who stood by smiling benignantly. Her look said—

‘If papa would let me.’

He did not reply, but seemed waiting. I resumed.

‘Are you a good horsewoman, Miss—Clara?’ I said, with a feel after the recovery of old privileges.

‘I must not sing my own praises, Mr—Wilfrid,’ she rejoined, ‘but I have ridden in Rotten Row, and I believe without any signal disgrace.’

‘Have you got a side-saddle?’ I asked, dismounting.

Mr Coningham spoke now.

‘Don’t you think Mr Cumbermede’s horse a little too frisky for you, Clara? I know so little about you, I can’t tell what you’re fit for.—She used to ride pretty well as a girl,’ he added, turning to me.

‘I’ve not forgotten that,’ I said. ‘I shall walk by her side, you know.’

‘Shall you?’ she said, with a sly look.

‘Perhaps,’ I suggested, ‘your grandfather would let me have his horse, and then we might have a gallop across the park.’

‘The best way,’ said Mr Coningham, ‘will be to let the gardener take your horse, while you come in and have some luncheon. We’ll see about the mount after that. My horse has to carry me back in the evening, else I should be happy to join you. She’s a fine creature, that of yours.’

‘She’s the handiest creature!’ I said—‘a little skittish, but very affectionate, and has a fine mouth. Perhaps she ought to have a curb-bit for you, though, Miss Clara.’

‘We’ll manage with a snaffle,’ she answered, with, I thought, another sly glance at me, out of eyes sparkling with suppressed merriment and expectation! Her father had gone to find the gardener, and as we stood waiting for him she still stroked the mare’s neck.

‘Are you not afraid of taking cold,’ I said, ‘without your bonnet?’

‘I never had a cold in my life,’ she returned.

‘That is saying much. You would have me believe you are not made of the same clay as other people.’

‘Believe anything you like,’ she answered carelessly.

‘Then I do believe it,’ I rejoined.

She looked me in the face, took her hand from the mare’s neck, stepped back half-a-foot and looked round, saying—

‘I wonder where that man can have got to. Oh, here he comes, and papa with him!’

We went across the trim little lawn, which lay waiting for the warmer weather to burst into a profusion of roses, and through a trellised porch entered a shadowy little hall, with heads of stags and foxes, an old-fashioned glass-doored bookcase, and hunting and riding whips, whence we passed into a low-pitched drawing-room, redolent of dried rose-leaves and fresh hyacinths. A little pug-dog, which seemed to have failed in swallowing some big dog’s tongue, jumped up barking from the sheep-skin mat, where he lay before the fire.

‘Stupid pug!’ said Clara. ‘You never know friends from foes! I wonder where my aunt is.’

She left the room. Her father had not followed us. I sat down on the sofa, and began turning over a pretty book bound in red silk, one of the first of the annual tribe, which lay on the table. I was deep in one of its eastern stories when, hearing a slight movement, I looked up, and there sat Clara in a low chair by the window, working at a delicate bit of lace with a needle. She looked somehow as if she had been there an hour at least. I laid down the book with some exclamation.

‘What is the matter, Mr Cumbermede?’ she asked, with the slightest possible glance up from the fine meshes of her work.

‘I had not the slightest idea you were in the room.’

‘Of course not. How could a literary man, with a Forget-me-not in his hand, be expected to know that a girl had come into the room?’

‘Have you been at school all this time?’ I asked, for the sake of avoiding a silence.

‘All what time?’

‘Say, since we parted in Switzerland.’

‘Not quite. I have been staying with an aunt for nearly a year. Have you been at college all this time?’

‘At school and college. When did you come home?’

‘This is not my home, but I came here yesterday.’

‘Don’t you find the country dull after London?’

‘I haven’t had time yet.’

‘Did they give you riding lessons at school?’

‘No. But my aunt took care of my morals in that respect. A girl might as well not be able to dance as ride now-a-days.’

‘Who rode with you in the park? Not the riding-master?’

With a slight flush on her face she retorted,

‘How many more questions are you going to ask me? I should like to know, that I may make up my mind how many of them to answer.’

‘Suppose we say six.’

‘Very well,’ she replied. ‘Now I shall answer your last question and count that the first. About nine o’clock, one—day—’

‘Morning or evening?’ I asked.

‘Morning of course—I walked out of—the house—’