"I want you,
and I'm not going to say that you'll have a better time than you did
in the North, or on the Slope; but if you'd rather be with me than not,
you'll find that I'll interest you. There's a bond between us, anyway.
You're half French, and I'm one-fourth French, and more. You're half
Indian, and I'm one-fourth Indian--no more. That's enough. So far, I
haven't much advantage. But I'm one-half English--King's English, for
there's been an offshoot of royalty in our family somewhere, and there's
the royal difference. That's where I get my brains--and manners."

"Where did you get the other?" asked Jacques, shyly, almost furtively.

"Money?"

"Not money--the other."

Belward spurred, and his horse sprang away viciously. A laugh came back
on Jacques, who followed as hard as he could, and it gave him a feeling
of awe. They were apart for a long time, then came together again, and
rode for miles without a word. At last Belward, glancing at a sign-post
before an inn door, exclaimed at the legend--"The Whisk o' Barley,"--and
drew rein. He regarded the place curiously for a minute. The landlord
came out. Belward had some beer brought.

A half-dozen rustics stood gaping, not far away. He touched his horse
with a heel. Saracen sprang towards them, and they fell back alarmed.
Belward now drank his beer quietly, and asked question after question of
the landlord, sometimes waiting for an answer, sometimes not--a kind of
cross-examination. Presently he dismounted.

As he stood questioning, chiefly about Ridley Court and its people, a
coach showed on the hill, and came dashing down and past. He lifted his
eyes idly, though never before had he seen such a coach as swings away
from Northumberland Avenue of a morning. He was not idle, however; but
he had not come to England to show surprise at anything. As the coach
passed his face lifted above the arm on the neck of the horse, keen,
dark, strange. A man on the box-seat, attracted at first by the uncommon
horses and their trappings, caught Belward's eyes. Not he alone, but
Belward started then. Some vague intelligence moved the minds of both,
and their attention was fixed till the coach rounded a corner and was
gone.

The landlord was at Belward's elbow.

"The gentleman on the box-seat be from Ridley Court. That's Maister Ian
Belward, sir."

Gaston Belward's eyes half closed, and a sombre look came, giving his
face a handsome malice. He wound his fingers in his horse's m