break into a furious canter
down the hill; the coach sways from side to side; and Dacre still looks
far ahead and down the road. If there is no light in the eyes, there is
no tremor of the lips; just so he looked when at the doorway, all
unconscious that Mary Lincoln was looking at his eyes and finding them
attractive. Dacre has never thought of women; his life has had but a
single thought, a single hope, and that, perhaps, a forlorn one.

In front, on the box-seat, is Geoffrey Ripon, driving, and Ripon is
miserable that Maggie Windsor is there, miserable that Eleanor Carey is
there, so miserable about either that he half forgets he has promised
his life to Dacre, and with him, so close that her full arm touches
his, and troubles him as if it had some magnetic influence, sits the
beautiful woman whose girlhood he had loved; she, now knowing this, now
conscious of the might of love, and of the power that it gave her
womanhood upon this man; and in her heart the madness of her misery, the
scorning of her world, the courage and the passion of despair.

It is a gay coaching party, and many such another rattles through this
world with the footmen and the shining trappings and the pomp of paint
and varnish. Oddly enough, no one speaks for moments, while they whirl
down the avenue beneath the stately trees. "Where shall I drive you to?"
finally says Ripon to the company.

"Where you like," says Miss Windsor, after a pause. "You must know the
prettiest place--you have known this country from your childhood."

Ripon drove them up to the highest crest of the down, where the long
main wave of the green hills stretches eastward along the coast, and the
faint blue sea sleeps glimmering in the south. Still no one spoke;
Dacre's eyes were lost over the ocean; even Miss Windsor was grave and
silent. Mrs. Carey tried to point out a sail to Geoffrey; he could not
see it, and she leaned over close to him that he might follow the
direction of her eye. Her breath seemed warm upon his face after the sea
breeze.

"Your eyes are not so good as they used to be," said she. Geoffrey
looked at her, and thought to himself that hers were deeper. He said so;
but she only laughed the more and looked at him again. "Do you remember
our rides in the pony-carriage?" she went on. "Poor Neddy!"

He did remember the rides in the pony-carriage only too well; when he
sat beside the laughing girl, and she looked up at him as they drove
through the leafy l