Hoping that you are well, and in the cordial pressing of your hand, I subscribe myself,

Your very devoted

LouisFerrand.

He rode with the letter open in his hand, frowning at the curious turmoil which Ferrand excited in his heart.  It was as though this foreign vagrant twanged within him a neglected string, which gave forth moans of a mutiny.

“What does he say?” Antonia asked.

Should he show it to her?  If he might not, what should he do when they were married?

“I don’t quite know,” he said at last; “it ’s not particularly cheering."’

“What is he like, Dick—­I mean, to look at?  Like a gentleman, or what?”

Shelton stifled a desire to laugh.

“He looks very well in a frock-coat,” he replied; “his father was a wine merchant.”

Antonia flicked her whip against her skirt.

“Of course,” she murmured, “I don’t want to hear if there’s anything I ought not.”

But instead of soothing Shelton, these words had just the opposite effect.  His conception of the ideal wife was not that of one from whom the half of life must be excluded.

“It’s only,” he stammered again, “that it’s not cheerful.”

“Oh, all right!” she cried, and, touching her horse, flew off in front.  “I hate dismal things.”

Shelton bit his lips.  It was not his fault that half the world was dark.  He knew her words were loosed against himself, and, as always at a sign of her displeasure, was afraid.  He galloped after her on the scorched turf.

“What is it?” he said.  “You ’re angry with me!”

“Oh no!”

“Darling, I can’t help it if things are n’t cheerful.  We have eyes,” he added, quoting from the letter.

Antonia did not look at him; but touched her horse again.

“Well, I don’t want to see the gloomy side,” she said, “and I can’t see why you should.  It’s wicked to be discontented;” and she galloped off.

It was not his fault if there were a thousand different kinds of men, a thousand different points of view, outside the fence of her experience!  “What business,” he thought, digging in his dummy spurs, “has our class to patronise?  We ’re the only people who have n’t an idea of what life really means.”  Chips of dried turf and dust came flying back, stinging his face.  He gained on her, drew almost within reach, then, as though she had been playing with him, was left hopelessly behind.

She stooped under the far hedge, fanning her flushed face with dock-leaves: 

“Aha, Dick!  I knew you’d never catch me” and she patted the chestnut mare, who turned her blowing muzzle with contemptuous humour towards Shelton’s steed, while her flanks heaved rapturously, gradually darkening with sweat.

“We’d better take them steadily,” grunted Shelton, getting off and loosening his girths, “if we mean to get home at all.”