-dealing at the Dublin Show was! I've heard how you bought my mare,
and had her shot the same night, because you wouldn't take the trouble
even to go and look at her after the poor little thing was hurt! Oh! I
can't bear even to _think_ of it!"

Rupert Gunning remained abjectly and dumfoundedly silent.

"And then," continued Fanny, whirling on to the final point of her
indictment, "you pretended to Captain Carteret and me that the horse you
had bought was 'a common brute,' _a cob for carting_, and you said the
other night that you had made a fool of yourself over it! I didn't know
then all about it, but I do now. Captain Carteret heard about it from
the dealer in Dublin. Even the dealer said it was a pity you hadn't
given the mare a chance!"

"It's all perfectly true," said Rupert, in a low voice.

A soft answer, so far from turning away wrath, frequently inflames it.

"Then I think there's no more to be said!" said Fanny hotly.

There was silence. They had reached the top of the hill, and the grey
mare began to trot.

"Well, there's just one thing I should like to say," said Rupert
awkwardly, his breath coming very short, "I couldn't help everything
going wrong about the mare. It was just my bad luck. I only bought her
to please you. They told me she couldn't get right after the accident.
What was the good of my going to look at her? I wanted to cross in the
boat with you. Whatever I did I did for you. I would do anything in the
world for you--"

It was at this crucial moment that there arose suddenly from the dim
grey road in front of them a slightly greyer shadow, a shadow that
limped amid the clanking of chains. The Connemara mare, now masquerading
as a County Cork cob, asked for nothing better. If it were a ghost, she
was legitimately entitled to flee from it; if, as was indeed the case,
it was a donkey, she made a point of shying at donkeys. She realised
that, by a singular stroke of good fortune, the reins were lying in
loops on her back.

A snort, a sideways bound, a couple of gleeful kicks on the dashboard,
and she was away at full gallop, with one rein under her tail, and a
pleasant open road before her.

"It's all right!" said Rupert, recovering his balance by a
hair-breadth, and feeling in his heart that it was all wrong, "the
Craffroe Hill will stop her. Hold on to the rail."

Fanny said nothing. It was, indeed, all that she could do to keep her
seat in the trap, with which the rushing road was