emporarily a guest of the house; and he talked to her of Redworth, and
had the satisfaction to spy a blush, a rageing blush: which avowal
presented her to his view as an exceedingly good-looking girl; so that he
began mentally to praise Redworth for a manly superiority to small
trifles and the world's tattle.

'You saw him to-day,' he said.

She answered: 'Yes. He goes down to Copsley tomorrow.'

'I think not,' said Sir Lukin.'

'I have it from him.' She closed her eyelids in speaking.

'He and I have some rather serious business in town.'

'Serious?'

'Don't be alarmed: not concerning him.'

'Whom, then? You have told me so much--I have a right to know.'

'Not an atom of danger, I assure you?'

'It concerns Mrs. Warwick!' said she.

Sir Lukin thought the guess extraordinary. He preserved an impenetrable
air. But he had spoken enough to set that giddy head spinning.

Nowhere during the night was Mrs. Fryar-Gannett visible. Earlier than
usual, she was riding next day in the Row, alone for perhaps two minutes,
and Sir Lukin passed her, formally saluting. He could not help the look
behind him, she sat so bewitchingly on horseback! He looked, and behold,
her riding-whip was raised erect from the elbow. It was his horse that
wheeled; compulsorily he was borne at a short canter to her side.

'Your commands?'

The handsome Amabel threw him a sombre glance from the corners of her
uplifted eyelids; and snakish he felt it; but her colour and the line of
her face went well with sullenness; and, her arts of fascination cast
aside, she fascinated him more in seeming homelier, girlish. If the trial
of her beauty of a woman in a temper can bear the strain, she has
attractive lures indeed; irresistible to the amorous idler: and when, in
addition, being the guilty person, she plays the injured, her show of
temper on the taking face pitches him into perplexity with his own
emotions, creating a desire to strike and be stricken, howl and set
howling, which is of the happiest augury for tender reconcilement, on the
terms of the gentleman on his kneecap.

'You've been doing a pretty thing!' she said, and briefly she named her
house and half an hour, and flew. Sir Lukin was left to admire the figure
of the horsewoman. Really, her figure had an air of vindicating her
successfully, except for the poison she spat at Diana Warwick. And what
pretty thing had he been doing? He reviewed dozens of speculations until
the impossibilit