‘I shall be one,’ said Nesta.

‘It would not be the commonest pleasure to me, if you were absent.’

‘Till eleven, then!’

‘After my morning letter to Ned.’

She sprinkled silvery sound on that name or on the adieu, blushed, blinked, frowned, sweetened her lip-lines, bit at the underone, and passed in a discomposure.

‘The lady?’ Colney asked.

’She is—­I meet her in the troop conducted by the riding-master:  Mrs. Marsett.’

‘And who is Ned?’

’It is her husband, to whom she writes every morning.  He is a captain in the army, or was.  He is in Norway, fishing.’

’Then the probability is, that the English officer continues his military studies.’

‘Do you not think her handsome, Mr. Durance?’

’Ned may boast of his possession, when he has trimmed it and toned it a little.!

‘She is different, if you are alone with her.’

‘It is not unusual,’ said Colney.

At eleven o’clock he was in London, and Nesta rode beside Mrs. Marsett amid the troop.

A South-easterly wind blew the waters to shifty goldleaf prints of brilliance under the sun.

‘I took a liberty this morning, I called you “Dear” this morning,’ the lady said.  ’It’s what I feel, only I have no right to blurt out everything I feel, and I was ashamed.  I am sure I must have appeared ridiculous.  I got quite nervous.’

‘You would not be ridiculous to me.’

’I remember I spoke of Ned!

‘You have spoken of him before.’

’Oh!  I know:  to you alone.  I should like to pluck out my heart and pitch it on the waves, to see whether it would sink or swim.  That’s a funny idea, isn’t it!  I tell you everything that comes up.  What shall I do when I lose you!  You always make me feel you’ve a lot of poetry ready-made in you.’

‘We will write.  And you will have your husband then.’

’When I had finished my letter to Ned, I dropped my head on it and behaved like a fool for several minutes.  I can’t bear the thought of losing you!’

‘But you don’t lose me,’ said Nesta; ’there is no ground for your supposing that you will.  And your wish not to lose me, binds me to you more closely.’

‘If you knew!’ Mrs. Marsett caught at her slippery tongue, and she carolled:  ’If we all knew everything, we should be wiser, and what a naked lot of people we should be!’

They were crossing the passage of a cavalcade of gentlemen, at the end of the East Cliff.  One among them, large and dominant, with a playful voice of brass, cried out: 

‘And how do you do, Mrs. Judith Marsett—­ha?  Beautiful morning?’

Mrs. Marsett’s figure tightened; she rode stonily erect, looked level ahead.  Her woman’s red mouth was shut fast on a fighting underlip.

‘He did not salute you,’ Nesta remarked, to justify her for not having responded.