and his person. He contrived by
I know not what persuasiveness and simplicity of manner and speech to
banish from me the idea that he was engaged in playing a high stake; and
though I knew it, and he more than once admitted it, there was an ease
and mastery about him that afforded me some degree of positive comfort
still. I was still most securely attached to his fortunes. Supposing the
ghost of dead Hector to have hung over his body when the inflamed son of
Peleus whirled him at his chariot wheels round Troy, he would, with his
natural passions sobered by Erebus, have had some of my reflections upon
force and fate, and my partial sense of exhilaration in the tremendous
speed of the course during the whole of the period my father termed
his Grand Parade. I showed just such acquiescence or resistance as
were superinduced by the variations of the ground. Otherwise I was
spell-bound; and beyond interdicting any further public mention of my
name or the princess's, I did nothing to thwart him. It would have been
no light matter.

We struck a station at a point half-way down to Bulsted, and found
little Kiomi there, thunder in her brows, carrying a bundle, and
purchasing a railway-ticket, not to travel in our direction. She gave
me the singular answer that she could not tell me where her people
were; nor would she tell me whither she was going, alone, and by rail. I
chanced to speak of Heriot. One of her sheet-lightning flashes shot out.
'He won't be at Bulsted,' she said, as if that had a significance. I
let her know we were invited to Bulsted. 'Oh, she 's at home'; Kiomi
blinked, and her features twitched like whip-cord. I saw that she was
possessed by one of her furies. That girl's face had the art of making
me forget beautiful women, and what beauty was by comparison.

It happened that the squire came across us as we were rounding the
slope of larch and fir plantation near a part of the Riversley hollows,
leading to the upper heath-land, where, behind a semicircle of birches,
Bulsted lay. He was on horseback, and called hoarsely to the captain's
coachman, who was driving us, to pull up. 'Here, Harry,' he sang out to
me, in the same rough voice, 'I don't see why we should bother Captain
William. It's a bit of business, not pleasure. I've got the book in my
pocket. You ask--is it convenient to step into my bailiff's cottage hard
by, and run through it? Ten minutes 'll tell me all I want to know. I
want it done with. Ask.'