aptured her. I believed at the time she would have appointed a year to
marry him in, had he put the question. But too many women were in love
with Heriot. He and I met Kiomi on the road to the race-course on the
Southdowns; the prettiest racecourse in England, shut against gipsies. A
bare-footed swarthy girl ran beside our carriage and tossed us flowers.
He and a friend of his, young Lord Destrier, son of the Marquis of
Edbury, who knew my father well, talked and laughed with her, and thought
her so very handsome that I likewise began to stare, and I suddenly
called 'Kiomi!' She bounded back into the hedge. This was our second
meeting. It would have been a pleasant one had not Heriot and Destrier
pretended all sorts of things about our previous acquaintance. Neither of
us, they said, had made a bad choice, but why had we separated? She
snatched her hand out of mine with a grin of anger like puss in a fury.
We had wonderful fun with her. They took her to a great house near the
race-course, and there, assisted by one of the young ladies, dressed her
in flowing silks, and so passed her through the gate of the enclosure
interdicted to bare feet. There they led her to groups of fashionable
ladies, and got themselves into pretty scrapes. They said she was an
Indian. Heriot lost his wagers and called her a witch. She replied,
'You'll find I'm one, young man,' and that was the only true thing she
spoke of the days to come. Owing to the hubbub around the two who were
guilty of this unmeasured joke upon consequential ladies, I had to
conduct her to the gate. Instantly, and without a good-bye, she scrambled
up her skirts and ran at strides across the road and through the wood,
out of sight. She won her dress and a piece of jewelry.

With Heriot I went on a sad expedition, the same I had set out upon with
Temple. This time I saw my father behind those high red walls, once so
mysterious and terrible to me. Heriot made light of prisons for debt. He
insisted, for my consolation, that they had but a temporary dishonourable
signification; very estimable gentlemen, as well as scamps, inhabited
them, he said. The impression produced by my visit--the feasting among
ruined men who believed in good luck the more the lower they fell from
it, and their fearful admiration of my imprisoned father--was as if I had
drunk a stupefying liquor. I was unable clearly to reflect on it. Daily
afterwards, until I released him, I made journeys to usurers to