“There’s the advantage of training in other things,” said the master.  “She’s a good dancer and a good amateur actress, and she is controlling herself as she would on a ballroom floor, and remembering the spectators as she would on the stage.  She’s no rider, but is perfectly selfish and self-possessed, and she will cheat her escort into thinking that she is one.  Glad she’s no pupil of mine, however!  She always heads the conversation, one of her friends told me the other day.  That is to say, she is always acting.  I can’t teach such a person anything; nobody can.  She can teach herself, as she can think of herself and love herself, but she can’t go outside of herself—­and the lawyer will find it out after he has married her.”

Esmeralda and Theodore stared in astonishment.

“Walk,” said the master, noticing that his pupil looked too warm for comfort, and the three allowed the others to go on without them.  “Careful,” he added, and Esmeralda, adjusting herself studiously, asked:  “Is it really easier to ride on the road than it is in the school?  It seems so.”

“It is a little, especially if the corners of the ring are so near together that the horse goes in a circle, for then the rider has to lean to the right, while on the road she may sit straight.  Give me the right kind of horse for my pupil to ride, and I would as leif give lessons on the road as anywhere, but it is not well for the pupil, whose attention is distracted by a thousand things, and who learns less in a year than she would in a month in school.  There is no finish about the riding of a woman so taught.  She may be pretty, as you said of one of your friends, she may be self-possessed, like the other, but she will betray her ignorance every moment.  You were surprised just now at what I said of the society young lady.  A woman can’t cheat an old riding-master, after he has seen her in the saddle.  He knows her and her little ways by heart.  Shall we start up?  Ah!”

Ronald, the “steady as a rock,” was off and away at a canter; Theodore was starting to gallop in pursuit, but was sharply ordered back by the master, who went on himself at a rather slow canter, ready to break into a gallop if his pupil were thrown, but keeping out of Ronald’s hearing, lest he should be further startled by finding himself followed.  There was a clear stretch of road before her, and Esmeralda sat down as firmly as possible, brought her left knee up against the pommel, clung firmly with her right knee, held her hands low and her thumbs as firm as possible, and thought very hard.

“Very soon,” she said to herself, “I shall be thrown and dragged, and hat a figure I shall be going home, if I’, not killed!  But I sha’n’t be!  I shall be ridiculous, and that’s worse.”  Here she swept by the riding party, but as Versatilia and the beauty turned to look at her, and forgot to control their horses, the cavalryman and the Texan had to do it for them, and could do nothing for Esmeralda except to shout “Whoa,” which Ronald very properly disregarded.  The master came up, and the society young lady addressed him with, “Very silly of her to try to exhibit herself so, isn’t it?”