Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/448

 and rushed to the stables in some alarm. She was relieved to find that no serious casualty had occurred, and that Slap-Jack, very much out of breath, with his legs trembling and powerless from the unwonted exercise, was the only sufferer. He gasped and panted sadly; but she gathered that he had been ordered to bring the horse quietly home, at which she could not forbear smiling, and that Sir George was going to walk back the short way. It was a chance to be seized eagerly. She had been very low and dispirited all the morning, wishing she had spoken out to him before he went, and now here came another opportunity. Cerise was still young, and, to use the graphic expression of her own country, "a woman to the very tips of her fingers." She ran upstairs, put on her prettiest hat, and changed her breast-knots for fresh ribbons of newer gloss and a more becoming colour. Then she fluttered out through her garden, and crossing the home-park with a rising colour and a more elastic step, as the fresh air told upon her animal spirits, reached one end of the wooden foot-bridge as the two gentlemen arrived at the other.

She had only expected one. It was a disappointment; more, it was an embarrassment. She coloured violently, and looked, as she felt, both agitated and put out. Sir George could not but observe her distress, and again his heart ached with the dull, wearing, unacknowledged pain.

He jumped to conclusions; a man under such an influence always does. It seemed clear to him that his wife must have chosen this direction for her walk in order to meet the Jesuit. He did not blame Florian, for the priest had himself proposed they should return together, and could not, therefore, have expected her. Stay! Was this a blind? He stole a glance at him, and thought he seemed as much discomposed as her ladyship. All that he could disentangle afterwards. In the meantime one thing alone seemed clear. That Cerise, contrary to her usual habits, had come this distance on foot to meet her lover, and had found—her husband! He laughed to himself fiercely, with a grim savage humour, and felt as once or twice formerly in a duel, when his adversary, taking unfair advantage, had been foiled by his own act. Well, he would fight this battle at least with all the skill of fence he knew;