"All this is my land!"

And then again, the gaze was perhaps more direct, harder if
possible--hardy too. It was a measuring look; a challenging look. Once
when we were at Wiesbaden watching him play in a polo match against the
Bonner Hussaren I saw the same look come into his eyes, balancing the
possibilities, looking over the ground. The German Captain, Count Baron
Idigon von Leloeffel, was right up by their goal posts, coming with the
ball in an easy canter in that tricky German fashion. The rest of
the field were just anywhere. It was only a scratch sort of affair.
Ashburnham was quite close to the rails not five yards from us and
I heard him saying to himself: "Might just be done!" And he did it.
Goodness! he swung that pony round with all its four legs spread out,
like a cat dropping off a roof....

Well, it was just that look that I noticed in his eyes: "It might," I
seem even now to hear him muttering to himself, "just be done."

I looked round over my shoulder and saw, tall, smiling brilliantly and
buoyant--Leonora. And, little and fair, and as radiant as the track of
sunlight along the sea--my wife.

That poor wretch! to think that he was at that moment in a perfect devil
of a fix, and there he was, saying at the back of his mind: "It might
just be done." It was like a chap in the middle of the eruption of a
volcano, saying that he might just manage to bolt into the tumult and
set fire to a haystack. Madness? Predestination? Who the devil knows?

Mrs Ashburnham exhibited at that moment more gaiety than I have
ever since known her to show. There are certain classes of English
people--the nicer ones when they have been to many spas, who seem to
make a point of becoming much more than usually animated when they are
introduced to my compatriots. I have noticed this often. Of course, they
must first have accepted the Americans. But that once done, they seem to
say to themselves: "Hallo, these women are so bright. We aren't going to
be outdone in brightness." And for the time being they certainly aren't.
But it wears off. So it was with Leonora--at least until she noticed me.
She began, Leonora did--and perhaps it was that that gave me the idea of
a touch of insolence in her character, for she never afterwards did any
one single thing like it--she began by saying in quite a loud voice and
from quite a distance:

"Don't stop over by that stuffy old table, Teddy. Come and sit by these
nice people!"

And that w