That was another stone.

Stanistreet tugged at the reins with both hands and pulled the mare almost on to her haunches; her hoofs shrieked on the iron road; she stood still and snorted, her forelegs well out, her hide smoking.

When he had made quite sure that the animal’s attitude was that of temporary exhaustion rather than of passion, Stanistreet changed seats, and gave the reins to Mrs. Nevill Tyson; and Scarum burst into her second heat.

“I suppose you have a right to drive your own animal into the ditch,” said he.

Mrs. Nevill Tyson set her teeth with a determined air, planted her feet firmly on the floor of the trap to give herself a good purchase; she gave the reins a little twist as she had seen Stanistreet do, she balanced the whip like a fishing-rod, with the line dangling over Scarum’s ears, and then she rattled away over the wrinkling roads at a glorious pace; she reeled over cart-ruts, she went thump over sods and bump over mud-heaps, she grazed walls and hedges, skimmed over the brink of ditches, careened round corners, and tore past most things on the wrong side; and Stanistreet’s sense of deadly peril was lost in the pleasure of seeing her do it.  When she was not chattering to him she was encouraging Scarum with all sorts of endearments, small chirping sounds and delicate chuckles, smiling that indefinably malicious, lop-sided smile which Stanistreet had been taught all his life to interpret as a challenge.  Now they were going down a lane of beeches, they bent their heads under the branches, and a shower of rime fell about her shoulders, powdering her black hair; he watched it thawing in the warmth there till it sparkled like a fine dew; and now they were running between low hedges, and the keen air from the frosted fields smote the blood into her cheeks and the liquid light into her eyes; it lifted the fringe from her forehead and crisped it over the fur border of her hat; flying ends of lace and sable were flung behind her like streamers; she seemed to be winged with the wind of speed; she was the embodiment of vivid, reckless, beautiful life.

It came over him with a sort of shock that this woman was Tyson’s wife, irrevocably, until one or other of them died.  And Tyson was not the sort of man to die for anybody’s convenience but his own.

At last they swayed into the courtyard at Thorneytoft.  “Thank heaven we’re alive!” he said, as he followed her into the house.

Mrs. Nevill Tyson turned on the threshold.  “Do you mean to say you didn’t enjoy it!”

“Oh, of course it was delightful; but I don’t know that it was exactly—­safe.”

“I see—­you were afraid.  We were safe enough so long as I was driving.”

He smiled drearily.  He felt that he had been whirled along in a delirious dream—­a madman driven by a fool.  As if in answer to his thoughts, she called back over the banisters—­

“I’m not such a fool as I look, you know.”