ght
again. It was a capital run, and your horse behaved beautifully. I
don't think I made a bad choice for you. Rorie and his cousin were
miles behind, I daresay. Pretty girl, and sits her horse like a
picture--but she can't ride. We shall meet them going home, perhaps."

A mile or two farther on they met Roderick alone. His cousin had gone
home with her father.

"It was rather a bore losing the run," he said, as he turned his
horse's head and rode by Vixen, "but I was obliged to take care of my
cousin."

One of the Squire's tenants, a seventeen-stone farmer, on a stout gray
cob, overtook them presently, and Mr. Tempest rode on by his side,
talking agricultural talk about over-fed beasts and cattle shows, the
last popular form of cruelty to animals.

Roderick and Violet were alone, riding slowly side by side in the
darkening gray, between woods where solitary robins carolled sweetly,
or the rare gurgle of the thrush sounded now and then from thickets of
beech and holly.

A faint colour came back to Vixen's cheek. She was very angry with her
playfellow for his want of confidence, for his unfriendly reserve. Yet
this was the one happy hour of her day. There had been a flavour of
desolateness and abandonment in all the rest.

"I hope you enjoyed the run," said Rorie.

"I don't think you can care much whether we did or didn't," retorted
Vixen, shrouding her personality in a vague plural. "If you had cared
you would have been with us. Sultan," meaning the chestnut "must have
felt cruelly humiliated by being kept so far behind."

"If a man could be in two places at once, half of me, the better half
of me, would have been with you, Vixen; but I was bound to take care of
my cousin. I had insisted upon her coming."

"Of course," answered Vixen, with a little toss of her head; "it would
have been quite wrong if she had been absent."

They rode on in silence for a little while after this. Vixen was
longing to say: "Rorie, you have treated me very badly. You ought to
have told me you were going to be married." But something restrained
her. She patted her horse's neck, listened to the lonely robins, and
said not a word. The Squire and his tenant were a hundred yards ahead,
talking loudly.

Presently they came to a point at which their roads parted, but Rorie
still rode on by Vixen.

"Isn't that your nearest way?" asked Vixen, pointing down the
cross-road with the ivory handle of her whip.

"I am not going the neare