Enlightened by the inward experience of the moment, Richard was able to understand and respond to the feeling.  How different a sudden action flashed off the surface of a man’s nature may be from that which, had time been given, would have unfolded itself from its depths!

Bare-headed, Roger Heywood walked beside his son as he led the mare to the spot where Scudamore perforce awaited his return.  They found him stretched on the roadside, plucking handfuls of grass, and digging up the turf with his fingers, thus, and thus alone, betraying that he suffered.  Mr. Heywood at first refrained from any offer of hospitality, believing he would be more inclined to accept it after he had proved the difficulty of riding, in which case a previous refusal might stand in the way.  But although a slight groan escaped as they lifted him to the saddle, he gathered up the reins at once, and sat erect while they shortened the stirrup-leathers.  Lady seemed to know what was required of her, and stood as still as a vaulting horse until Richard took the bridle to lead her away.

‘I see!’ said Scudamore; ‘you can’t trust me with your horse!’

‘Not so, sir,’ answered Mr. Heywood.  ’We cannot trust the horse with you.  It is quite impossible for you to ride so far alone.  If you will go, you must submit to the attendance of my son, on which I am sorry to think you have so good a claim.  But will you not yet change your mind and be our guest—­for the night at least?  We will send a messenger to the castle at earliest dawn.’

Scudamore declined the invitation, but with perfect courtesy, for there was that about Roger Heywood which rendered it impossible for any man who was himself a gentleman, whatever his judgment of him might be, to show him disrespect.  And the moment the mare began to move, he felt no further inclination to object to Richard’s company at her head, for he perceived that, should she prove in the least troublesome, it would be impossible for him to keep his seat.  He did not suffer so much, however, as to lose all his good spirits, or fail in his part of a conversation composed chiefly of what we now call chaff, both of them for a time avoiding all such topics as might lead to dispute, the one from a sense of wrong already done, the other from a vague feeling that he was under the protection of the foregone injury.

‘Have you known my cousin Dorothy long?’ asked Scudamore.

‘Longer than I can remember,’ answered Richard.

‘Then you must be more like brother and sister than lovers.’

‘That, I fear, is her feeling,’ replied Richard, honestly.

‘You need not think of me as a rival,’ said Scudamore.  ’I never saw the young woman in my life before, and although anything of yours, being a roundhead’s, is fair game—­’

‘Your humble servant, sir Cavalier!’ interjected Richard.  ’Pray use your pleasure.’

‘I tell you plainly,’ Scudamore went on, without heeding the interruption, ’though I admire my cousin, as I do any young woman, if she be but a shade beyond the passable—­’