r she had
sold a horse for sixty pounds was not the day for a daughter of Ireland
to study economics. The breeze brought warm and subtle wafts from the
machinery; it also blew wisps of hair into Fanny Fitz's eyes and over
her nose, in a manner much revered in fiction, but in real life usually
unbecoming and always exasperating. She leaned back on the bench and
wondered whether the satisfaction of crowing over Mr. Gunning
compensated her for abandoning the tranquil security of the ladies'
cabin.

Mr. Gunning, though less contradictious than his wont, was certainly one
of the most deliberately unsympathetic men she knew. None the less he
was a man, and some one to talk to, both points in his favour, and she
stayed on.

"I just missed meeting the man who bought my mare," she said, recurring
to the subject for the fourth time; "apparently _he_ didn't think her 'a
leggy, long-backed brute,' as other people did, or said they did!"

"Did many people say it?" asked Mr. Gunning, beginning to make a
cigarette.

"Oh, no one whose opinion signified!" retorted Fanny Fitz, with a glance
from her charming, changeful eyes that suggested that she did not always
mean quite what she said. "I believe the dealer bought her for a
Leicestershire man. What she really wants is a big country where she can
extend herself."

Mr. Gunning reflected that by this time the grey mare had extended
herself once for all in Brennan's back-yard: he had done nothing to be
ashamed of, but he felt abjectly guilty.

"If I go with Maudie to Connemara again next year," continued Fanny, "I
must look out for another. You'll come too, I hope? A little opposition
is such a help in making up one's mind! I don't know what I should have
done without you at Leenane last June!"

Perhaps it was the vision of early summer that the words called up;
perhaps it was the smile, half-seen in the semi-dark, that curved her
provoking lips; perhaps it was compunction for his share in the tragedy
of the Connemara mare; but possibly without any of these explanations
Rupert would have done as he did, which was to place his hand on Fanny
Fitz's as it lay on the bench beside him.

She was so amazed that for a moment she wildly thought he had mistaken
it in the darkness for his tobacco pouch. Then, jumping with a shock to
the conclusion that even the unsympathetic Mr. Gunning shared most men's
views about not wasting an opportunity, she removed her hand with a
jerk.

"Oh! I be