And then, what had I to offer her in place of Torode’s solid advantages?  Just myself, and all my heart, and two strong arms.  They were good things, and no one in the world could love her as I did.  But, to a girl brought up as she had been of late, would they be enough?  And would these things satisfy her father, who had always been much of a mystery to us all, and who might have his own views as to her future, as the education he had given her seemed to indicate?

I had plenty to think about as we jogged along on Gray Robin, and Carette was thoughtful too.

Now and again, indeed, the clinging arms would give me a convulsive hug which set my blood jumping, but that was only when Gray Robin stumbled, and it meant nothing more than a fear of falling overboard on her part, and I could not build on it.

We chatted, by snatches, of the party and of things that had happened in my absence.  But of the sweet whispers and little confidences which should set all riders on Riding Day above all the rest of the world, there were none between us, and at times we fell to silence and a touch of constraint.

On Eperquerie Common I got down, and led Gray Robin cautiously over the long green slopes among the cushions of gorse and the waist-high ferns, and down the rocky way to the knoll above the landing-place.  And as we sat on the soft turf among the empty shells, looking out over the long line of weather-bitten headlands and tumbled rocks, with the blue sea creaming at their feet, I suppose I must have heaved a sigh, for Carette laughed and said—­

“Ma fe, but you are lively to-day, Phil.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.  “I was thinking of the old times when we used to scramble about here as merry as the rock pipits.  They were very happy days, Carette.”

“Yes,” she nodded, “they were happy days.  But we’ve grown since then.”

“One can’t help growing, but I don’t know that it makes one any happier.”

“Tell me all you did out there,” she said, and I lay in the sunshine and told her of our shipwreck, and of the Florida swamps, and of the great city of London through which I had come on my way home.  And then, somehow, our talk was of the terrible doings in France, not so very many years before, of which she had never heard much and I only of late.  It was probably the blue line of coast on the horizon which set us to that, and perhaps something of a desire on my part to show her that, if she had been learning things at the Miss Maugers, I also had been learning in the greater world outside.

It was very different from the talk that usually passes between riders on Riding Day.  For every horse that day is supposed to carry three, though one of them nestles so close between the others that only bits of him may be seen at times in their eyes and faces.

But it was all no use.  With young Torode in my mind, and Jean Le Marchant’s probable intentions respecting Carette, and Carette’s own wonderful growth which seemed to put us on different levels, and the smallness of my own prospects,—­I could not bring myself to venture any loverly talk, though my heart was full of loving thoughts and growing intention.