It was the intention of my lord Duke to let his horse carry him over such roads and lands as would be in the near neighbourhood of Wildairs, and while he recognised the similarity of his action to that of a school-boy in love, who paces the street before his sweetheart’s dwelling, there was no smile at himself, either on his countenance or in his mind.

“I may see her,” he said quietly to himself.  “I am more like to catch sight of her on these roads than on any other, and, school-boy trick or not, ’twill serve, and if she passes will have won me what I long for—­for it is longing, this.  I know it now, and own it to myself.”

And see her he did, but as is ever the case when a man has planned a thing, it befell as he had not thought of its happening—­and ’twas over in a flash.

Down one of the wet lanes he had turned and was riding slowly when he heard suddenly behind him a horse coming at such a sharp gallop that he wheeled his own beast aside, the way being dangerously narrow, that so tempestuous a rider might tear by in safety.  And as he turned and was half screened by the bushes, the rider swept past him splashing through the mire and rain-pools so that the muddy water flew up beneath the horses’ hoofs—­and ’twas the object of his thoughts herself!

She rode her tall young horse and was not clad as he had before beheld her, but in rich riding-coat and hat and sweeping feather.  No maid of honour of her Majesty Queen Anne’s rode attired more fittingly, none certainly with such a seat and spirit, and none, Heaven knew, looked like her.

These things he marked in a flash, not knowing he had marked them until afterwards, so strong and moving was his sudden feeling that in her nature at that moment there worked some strange new thing—­some mood new to herself and angering her.  Her brows were bent, her eyes were set and black with shadow.  She bit her full lip as she rode, and her horse went like the wind.  For but a moment she was through the lane and clattering on the road.

My lord Duke was breathing fast and bit his own lip, but the next second broke into a laugh, turning his horse, whose bridle he had caught up with a sudden gesture.

“Nay,” he said, “a man cannot gallop after a lady without ceremony, and command her to stand and deliver as if he were a highwayman.  Yet I was within an ace of doing it—­within an ace.  I have beheld her!  I had best ride back to Dunstan’s Wolde.”

And so he did, at a hot pace; but if he had chanced to turn on the top of the hill he might have seen below him in a lane to the right that two rode together, and one was she whom he had but just seen, her companion a horseman who had leapt a gate in a field and joined her, with flushed cheeks and wooing eyes, though she had frowned—­and ’twas the town rake and beauty, Sir John Oxon.

CHAPTER XVI

A Rumour