the
surface; if there was any profundity to the man the ripple obscured it.
No eye had ever penetrated the secrecy of what lay below; none ever
would. Perhaps there was nothing there.

He journeyed on, his horse ambling or walking as it suited him, or
sometimes veering to stretch a long glossy neck and nip at a bunch of
leaves.

The cock-partridge stood on his drumming-log and defied the forest
rider, all unseen; rabbit and squirrel sat bolt upright with palpitating
flanks and moist bright eyes at gaze; overhead the slow hawks sailed,
looking down at him as he rode.

Sometimes Malcourt whistled to himself, sometimes he sang in a variably
agreeable voice, and now and then he quoted the poets, taking pleasure
in the precision of his own diction.

"C'est le jour des morts,
Mirliton, Mirlitaine!
Requiescant in pace!"

he chanted; and quoted more of the same bard with a grimace, adding, as
he spurred his horse:

"_Poeta nascitur, non fit_!--the poet's nasty and not fit. Zut!
Boum-boum! Get along, old fellow, or we'll never see the pretty ladies
of Pride's this blooming day!"

There was a shorter cut by a spotted trail, and when he saw the first
blaze glimmering through the leaves he steered his horse toward it. The
sound of voices came distantly from the wooded heights above--far
laughter, the faint aroma of a wood fire; no doubt some
picnickers--trespassing as usual, but that was Mrs. Ascott's affair.

A little later, far below him, he caught a glimpse of a white gown among
the trees. There was a spring down there somewhere in that thicket of
silver birches; probably one of the trespassers was drinking. So, idly
curious, he rode that way, his horse making no sound on the thick moss.

"If she's ornamental," he said to himself, "I'll linger to point out the
sin of trespassing; that is if she is sufficiently ornamental--"

His horse stepped on a dead branch which cracked; the girl in white, who
had been looking out through the birch-trees across the valley, turned
her head.

They recognised each other even at that distance; he uttered a low
exclamation of satisfaction, sprang from his saddle, and led his horse
down among the mossy rocks of the water-course to the shelf of rock
overhanging the ravine where she stood as motionless as one of the
silver saplings.

"Virginia," he said, humorously abashed, "shall I say I am glad to see
you, and how d'you do, and offer you my hand?--or had I better not?"