Barbara, however, is diffident of her own opinion, and repeats my question to her lover.

He shrugs his shoulders.

“Is he?  I have not noticed him; nothing more likely; last time I saw him he was flying!  It was in India at a great pig-sticking meeting, and after dinner he got up to the top of a big mango-tree, and tried to fly!  Of course he fell down, but he was so drunk that he was not in the least hurt.”

Mr. Musgrave seems to think this an amusing anecdote; but we do not.

“Why do not you drive?” I ask, contrary to all my resolutions addressing my future brother-in-law, and indeed forgetting in my alarm that I had ever made such.  I am reminded of it, however, by the look of gratification that flashes—­for only one moment and is gone—­but still flashes into the depths of his great dark eyes.

“It is so likely that he would let me!” he says, laughing.

“I would not mind so much if I were at the back!” I say, piteously, turning to Barbara.  “At the back one does not know what is coming, but on the box one sees whatever is happening.”

“That is rather an advantage I think,” she answers, laughing.  “I do not mind; I will go on the box.”

“Will you?” say I, eagerly. “Do! and I will take care of the old general at the back.”

So it is settled.  We are on the point of starting now.  Mr. Parker is up and is already beginning to struggle with the hopeless muddle of his reins.  I think we have perhaps done him an injustice; at all events, his condition is not at all what it must have been when he mounted the mango.  Algy’s morosity has returned tenfold, and he is performing the evolution familiarly known as “pulling your nose to vex your face.”  That is to say, he is standing about in the pouring rain utterly unprotected from it.  He entirely declines to put on any mackintosh or overcoat.  Why he does this, or how it punishes Mrs. Huntley, I cannot say, but so it is.

We are off at last.  I, in accordance with my wishes, up at the back, facing the grooms; but not at all in accordance with my wishes, Mr. Musgrave, and not the old host, is my companion.

“This is all wrong!” I cry, with vexed abruptness, as I see who it is that is climbing after me.  “Where is the general?  We settled that he—­”

“I am afraid you will have to put up with me!” interrupts Musgrave, coldly, with that angry and mortified darkening of the whole face, and sudden contraction of the eyeballs that I used so well to know.  “We could not make him hear; we all tried, but none of us could make him understand.”  So I have to submit.

Well, we are off now.  The night is coming quickly down:  it will be quite dark an hour sooner than usual tonight, so low does the great black cloud-curtain stoop to the earth’s wet face.  Ink above us, so close above us, too, that it seems as if one might touch it with lifted hand; ink around us; a great stretch of dull and sulky heather; and, maddening around us with devilish glee, hitting us, buffeting us, bruising us, taking away our breath, and making our eyelids smart, is a wind—­such a wind!  I should have laughed if any one had told me an hour ago that it would rise.  I should have said it was impossible, and yet it certainly has.