“You have been quick,” he said.

“Yes; I am learning one of my wifely duties:  not to keep my husband waiting.”  They went out, and Pottinger, standing by the horses, touched his hat and grew red with joy at sight of his master.

“Well, Pottinger!  Glad to see you!” said Stafford; and he was genuinely glad.  “You’re looking well, and the horse is too.  Halloo! you’re put the side-saddle on Adonis,” he added, as he went up and patted the horse.

Pottinger touched his hat again.

“Yes, sir; Miss Falconer’s been riding him, and I did not know that I ought to change the saddle.  I can do so in a minute—­”

“No, no,” said Stafford; “never mind.  I will ride the hunter, as you have the saddle on him.  You like Adonis, Maude?”

“Oh, yes,” she replied.  “Though I’m not quite sure he likes me,” she added, with a laugh.

Stafford put her up, and noticed, with some surprise, that Adonis seemed restless and ill at ease, and that he shivered and shrank as he felt Maude on his back.

“What is the matter with him?” he said.  “He seems fidgety.  Does the saddle fit?”

“Yes, sir,” said Pottinger, with a half-nervous glance at Maude, followed by the impassive expression of the trained servant who cannot speak out.

“He is troublesome sometimes,” said Maude; “but I can manage him quite easily.”

“Oh, yes,” assented Stafford; “he is as quiet as a lamb; but he is highly bred and as highly strung.”

As they were starting, Pottinger murmured: 

“Don’t curb him too tightly, miss.”

Maude ignored the warning; and she and Stafford rode out.  The rain had ceased, the clouds had passed away, and in the joy of his nearness, her spirits rose, a feeling of triumph swelled in her bosom.

“How little I thought yesterday, even this morning, that we should be riding side by side, Stafford,” she said.  “How little I thought I should have you back again, my own, my very own!  Don’t all these months you’ve been away seem like a dream to you?  They do to me.”  She drew a long breath.  “Let us ride across the dale.”

“You will find it wet there, had you not better keep to the road?”

“No, no,” she said; “Adonis is dying for a gallop; see how he is fretting.”

Stafford looked at the horse curiously.  He was champing his bit and throwing up his head in a nervous, agitated manner which Stafford had never seen him display before.

“I can’t make the horse out,” he said, more to himself than Maude.  “Perhaps he’ll be all right after a gallop.”