is fencing and diplomacy and irony. You know
what I am--I am not at all the fine gentleman that leaned his head on
the chimney-breast--that was make-believe and foolishness. I am a bully
and a brute--you have told me so--"

"Oh!" wailed Dolly suddenly--no longer pretending; and I caught the
note in her voice for which I had been waiting. I dropped the lantern;
the horses plunged violently at the flare and the crash; but I cared
nothing for that. I dragged furiously on the bridle; and as the horses
swung together, I caught her round the shoulders, and kissed her
fiercely on the cheek. She clung to me, weeping.

CHAPTER V

Well; I had beaten her at last; and in the only way in which she would
yield. Weakness was of no use with her, nor gentleness, nor even that
lofty patronage which, poor fool! I had shewn her in the parlour at Hare
Street. She must be man's mate--which is certainly a rather savage
relation at bottom--not merely his pretty and grateful wife. This I
learned from her, as we rode onwards and up into the high road--(where,
I may say in passing, there was no sign of our party)--though she did
not know she was telling it me.

"Oh! Roger," she said. "And I thought you were a--a pussy-cat."

"That is the second time I have been told so in two days," I said.

"Who told you so?"

"His Majesty."

"I thought His Majesty was wiser," said she.

"He has been pretty wise, though," I said. "If it were not for him, we
should not be riding here together."

"I suppose you made him do that too," she said.

* * * * *

But it was not only of Dolly that I had learned my lessons; it was of
myself also. I was astonished how inevitable it appeared to me now that
we should be riding together on such terms; and I understood that never,
for one instant, all through this miserable year away from her, had I
ever, interiorly, loosed my hold upon her. Beneath all my resolutions
and wilful distractions the intention had persevered. All the while I
was saying to myself in my own mind that I should never see Dolly again,
something that was not my mind--(I suppose my heart)--was telling me the
precise opposite. Well; the heart had been right, after all.

* * * * *

She asked me presently what I should say to her father.

"I shall forgive him a great deal now, that I thought I never should,"
I said with wonderful magnanimity. "A few sharp words only, and no