s, small chirping sounds and delicate
chuckles, smiling that indefinably malicious, lop-sided smile which
Stanistreet had been taught all his life to interpret as a challenge.
Now they were going down a lane of beeches, they bent their heads under
the branches, and a shower of rime fell about her shoulders, powdering
her black hair; he watched it thawing in the warmth there till it
sparkled like a fine dew; and now they were running between low hedges,
and the keen air from the frosted fields smote the blood into her cheeks
and the liquid light into her eyes; it lifted the fringe from her
forehead and crisped it over the fur border of her hat; flying ends of
lace and sable were flung behind her like streamers; she seemed to be
winged with the wind of speed; she was the embodiment of vivid, reckless,
beautiful life.

It came over him with a sort of shock that this woman was Tyson's wife,
irrevocably, until one or other of them died. And Tyson was not the sort
of man to die for anybody's convenience but his own.

At last they swayed into the courtyard at Thorneytoft. "Thank heaven
we're alive!" he said, as he followed her into the house.

Mrs. Nevill Tyson turned on the threshold. "Do you mean to say you didn't
enjoy it!"

"Oh, of course it was delightful; but I don't know that it was
exactly--safe."

"I see--you were afraid. We were safe enough so long as _I_ was driving."

He smiled drearily. He felt that he had been whirled along in a delirious
dream--a madman driven by a fool. As if in answer to his thoughts, she
called back over the banisters--

"I'm not such a fool as I look, you know."

No, for the life of him Stanistreet did not know. His doubt was absurd,
for it implied that Mrs. Nevill Tyson practiced the art of symbolism, and
he could hardly suppose her to be so well acquainted with the resources
of language. On the other hand, he could not conceive how, after living
more than half a year with Tyson, she had preserved her formidable
_naivete_.

At dinner that evening she still further obscured the question by
boasting that she had saved Captain Stanistreet's life. Stanistreet
protested.

"Nonsense," said she; "you know perfectly well that you'd have upset the
whole show if you'd been left to yourself."

Tyson stared at his wife. "Do you mean to say that he let you drive?"

"Let me? Not he! He couldn't help it." Her white throat shook with
derisive laughter. "I took the reins; or, if you like, I k