Stanistreet smiled grimly.  He was wondering whether she was “primitive.”

“Just look at Scarum’s ears!  Don’t tease her.  She doesn’t like it.  Dear thing!  She’s delicious to kiss—­she’s got such a soft nose.  But she’ll bolt as soon as look at you, and she’s awfully hard to hold.”  Her fingers were twitching with the desire to hold Scarum.

“I think I can manage her.”

“You see, somehow or the other I like talking to you.  You may be a sinner, but I don’t think you are a fool; and I’ve a sort of a notion that you understand.”

He was silent.  So many women had thought he understood.

“I wonder—­do you understand!”

The eyes that Mrs. Nevill Tyson turned on Stanistreet were not search-lights; they were wells of darkness, unsearchable, unfathomable.

Something in Stanistreet, equally inscrutable, something that was himself and not himself, answered very low to that vague appeal.

“Yes, I understand.”

He had turned towards her, smiling darkly, and all her face flashed back a happy smile.

Surely, oh surely, Mrs. Nevill Tyson was the soul of indiscretion; for at that moment Miss Batchelor, trotting past with Lady Morley, looked from them to her companion and smiled too.

That smile was the first stone.

Miss Batchelor acknowledged them with a curt little nod, and Mrs. Nevill Tyson’s face became instantly overclouded.  Louis leaned a little nearer and said in a husky, uneven voice, “Surely you don’t mind that impertinent woman?”

“Not a bit,” said Mrs. Nevill Tyson.  “She’s got a villainous seat.”

“Then what are you thinking about?”

“I’m thinking what horrid hard lines it is that they won’t let me hunt.  All the time I might have been flying across country with Nevill, instead of—­”

“Instead of crawling in a dog-cart with me.  Thank you, Mrs. Nevill.”

“You needn’t thank me.  I haven’t given you anything.”

Again Stanistreet wondered whether Mrs. Nevill was very simple or very profound.  And wondering, he gave the mare a cut across the flanks that made her leap in the shafts.

“That was silly of you.  She’ll have her heels through before you know where you are.  She’s a demon to kick, is Scarum.”

Scarum had spared the splash-board this time, but she was going furiously, and the little dog-cart rocked from side to side.  Mrs. Nevill Tyson rose to her feet.

“Strikes me you can’t drive a little bit,” said she.

“Please sit down, Mrs. Tyson.”  But Mrs. Tyson remained imperiously standing, trying to keep her balance like a small sailor in a rollicking sea.

“Get up.”

Stanistreet muttered wrathfully under his mustache, and she caught the words “damned foolery.”

“Bundle out this minute.”  She made a grab at the rail in an undignified manner.

He doubled the reins firmly over his right hand, and with his left arm he forced her back into her seat.  He was holding her there when Farmer Ashby turned out of a by-lane and followed close behind them.  And Farmer Ashby had a nice tale to tell at “The Cross-Roads” of how he had seen the Captain driving with his arm round Mrs. Tyson’s waist.