, and Boon had driven on
for half an hour by order.

This, too, had happened, external to Boon's knowledge: the lady and the
gentleman had witnessed, through the small diamond window-panes of the
Jolly Cricketers' parlour, the passing-by of the two horsemen in pursuit
of them; and the gentleman had stopped the chariot coming on some fifteen
minutes later, but he did not do it at the instigation of the lady.

CHAPTER XX

AT THE SIGN OF THE JOLLY CRICKETERS

The passing by of the pair of horsemen, who so little suspected the
treasure existing behind the small inn's narrow window did homage in
Aminta's mind to her protector's adroitness. Their eyes met without a
smile, though they perceived the grisly comic of the incident. Their
thoughts were on the chariot to follow.

Aminta had barely uttered a syllable since the start of the flight from
Ashead. She had rocked in a swing between sensation and imagination,
exultant, rich with the broad valley of the plain and the high green
waves of the downs at their giant's bound in the flow of curves and sunny
creases to the final fling-off of the dip on sky. Here was a twisted
hawthorn carved clean to the way of the wind; a sheltered clump of
chestnuts holding their blossoms up, as with a thousand cresset-clasping
hands; here were grasses that nodded swept from green to grey; flowers
yellow, white, and blue, significant of a marvellous unknown through the
gates of colour; and gorse-covers giving out the bird, squares of young
wheat, a single fallow threaded by a hare, and cottage gardens, shadowy
garths, wayside flint-heap, woods of the mounds and the dells, fluttering
leaves, clouds: all were swallowed, all were the one unworried
significance. Scenery flew, shifted, returned; again the line of the
downs raced and the hollows reposed simultaneously. They were the same in
change to an eye grown older; they promised, as at the first, happiness
for recklessness. The whole woman was urged to delirious recklessness in
happiness, and she drank the flying scenery as an indication, a likeness,
an encouragement.

When her wild music of the blood had fallen to stillness with the stopped
wheels, she was in the musky, small, low room of the diamond
window-panes, at her companion's disposal for what he might deem the
best: he was her fate. But the more she leaned on a man of self-control,
the more she admired; and an admiration that may not speak itself to the
object present drops in