ivering and tossing her
head, displaying fresh cuts and bruises in her dusty coat. The labourer
put his hand on her neck, soothing her with gentle words and touches,
while his master surveyed her with kindly concern.

"Poor brute! Better take her to the stables, James, and send off for a
vet. Mrs Greville can no doubt spare a carriage to take these ladies
home." He turned towards Cornelia with an impulse of provocation which
seemed to spring from some source outside himself. As a rule he was
chivalrous where women were concerned, but there was something in the
personality of this girl which aroused his antagonism. It seemed almost
a personal offence that she should be so alert and composed while the
mare bled and trembled, and that pale, lovely thing lay like a broken
snowdrop on the bank. He felt a growing desire to annoy, to wound, to
break down this armour of complacent vanity.

"So you could not hold her till she tired herself out? Well! the
experiment seems to have answered less successfully from her point of
view than your own. She'll need a considerable time to recover her
nerves and give these scratches time to heal."

"Skin deep!" sneered Cornelia, with a curl of the lip. "I'll drive her
back in a day or two; and up and down this road until she learns not to
play that trick again. I've never given in to a horse yet, and I'm not
going to begin with a hack mare!"

The stranger eyed her with cold disapproval.

"Perhaps her owner may refuse to allow her to be experimented upon
again. I should, in his place! It may be foolish, but I hate to see a
brute suffer, even for the noble purpose of proving my own superiority."

He swung away as he spoke, thus failing to see the stunned blankness of
Cornelia's expression. Straight as a dart she stood, with head thrown
back, scarlet lips pressed tightly together, and dark brows knitted
above the wounded tragedy of her eyes. The labourer standing by the
mare's side looked towards her with honest sympathy. He had had
personal experience of the "length of the Captain's tongue," and was
correspondingly sympathetic towards another sufferer. A tender of dumb
animals, he was quick to understand the expression on the girl's face,
and to know that she had been wrongfully accused.

"Don't you take on, miss!" he said, touching his cap with the unashamed
servility at which the American girl never ceased to wonder. "I'll look
after her meself, and if the dirt is wa