Exquisite picture of strength and beauty superbly modelled:  the horses’ glossy coats glinting all a polished chestnut’s hues; the perfect artistry and symmetry of slender limbs, and glorious, arching necks, and noble heads, and velvet muzzles; the dazzling bits and chains and buckles; the glinting bridles, reins and saddles; Lord Tybar’s exquisitely poised figure, so perfectly maintaining and carrying up the symmetry of his horse as to suggest the horse would be disfigured, truncated, were he to dismount; his taking swagger, his gay, fine face; and she....

An incantation:  jingle of bits mouthed in those velvet muzzles; a hoof pawed sharply on the road; swish of long, restless tails; creaking of saddlery; and sudden bursts of all the instruments in unison when heads were tossed and shaken.  Remotely the whirr of a reaping machine.  And somewhere birds....

Pretty!

VI

Greetings had been exchanged; his apologies for his blundering descent upon them laughed at.  Lord Tybar was saying, “Well, it’s a tiger of a place, this Garden Home of yours, Sabre—­”

“It’s not mine,” said Sabre.  “God forbid.”

“Ah, you’ve not got the same beautiful local patriotism that I have.  It’s one of my most elegant qualities, my passionate devotion to my countryside.  That was what that corker of a vicar of yours, Boom Bagshaw, told me I was when I wept with joy while he was showing me round.  Yes, and now I’m a patron of the Garden Home Trust or a governor or a vice-priest or something.  I am really.  What is it I am, Nona?”

“You’re a bloated aristocrat and a bloodsucker,” Nona told him in her clear, fine voice.  “And you’re living on estates which your brutal ancestors ravaged from the people.  That’s what you are, Tony.  I showed it you in the Searchlight yesterday.  And, I say, don’t use ‘elegant’; that’s mine.”

“Oh, by gad, yes, so I am,” said Lord Tybar.  “Bloodsucker!  Good lord, fancy being a bloodsucker!”

He looked so genuinely rueful and abashed that Sabre laughed; and then said to Nona, “Why is elegant ‘yours’, Lady Tybar?”

She made a little pouting motion at him with her lips.  “Marko, I wish to goodness you wouldn’t call me Lady Tybar.  Dash it, we’ve called one another Nona and Marko for about a thousand years, long before I ever knew Tony.  And just because I’m married—­”

“And to a mere loathsome bloodsucker, too,” Lord Tybar interposed.

“Yes, especially to a bloodsucker.  Just remember to say Nona, will you, otherwise there’ll be a cruel scene between us.  I told you about it before I went away.  You don’t suppose Tony minds, do you?”

“And Sabre,” said Lord Tybar, “what the devil does it matter what a bloated robber minds, anyway?  That’s the way to look at me, Sabre.  Trample me underfoot, my boy.  I’m a pestilent survivor of the feudal system, aren’t I, Nona?”