over between us--you
saw that?'

'I felt it!' I replied. 'She nearly broke my leg.'

'It was intended for me,' he said. 'It was her way of signifying that we
had better be strangers for the future. I taxed her with her
faithlessness; she denied it, of course--every mare does; we had an
explanation, and everything is at an end!'

I did not ride him again for some days, and when I did, I found him
steeped in Byronic gloom. He even wanted at first to keep entirely on
the Bayswater side of the Park, though I succeeded in arguing him out of
such weakness. 'Be a horse!' I said. 'Show her you don't care. You only
flatter her by betraying your feelings.'

This was a subtlety that had evidently not occurred to him, but he was
intelligent enough to feel the force of what I said. 'You are right,' he
admitted; 'you are not quite a fool in some respects. She shall see how
little I care!'

Naturally, after this, I expected to accompany Diana as usual, and it
was a bitter disappointment to me to find that Brutus would not hear of
doing so. He had an old acquaintance in the Park, a dapple-grey, who,
probably from some early disappointment was a confirmed cynic, and whose
society he thought would be congenial just then. The grey was ridden
regularly by a certain Miss Gittens, whose appearance as she titupped
laboriously up and down had often furnished Diana and myself with
amusement.

And now, in spite of all my efforts, Brutus made straight to the grey. I
was not in such difficulties as might have been expected, for I happened
to know Miss Gittens slightly, as a lady no longer in the bloom of
youth, who still retained a wiry form of girlishness. Though rather
disliking her than not, I found it necessary just then to throw some
slight effusion into my greeting. She, not unnaturally perhaps, was
flattered by my preference, and begged me to give her a little
instruction in riding, which--Heaven forgive me for it!--I took upon
myself to do.

Even now I scarcely see how I could have acted otherwise: I could not
leave her side until Brutus had exhausted the pleasures of cynicism with
his grey friend, and the time had to be filled up somehow. But, oh, the
torture of seeing Diana at a distance, and knowing that only a miserable
misunderstanding between our respective steeds kept us apart, feeling
constrained even to avoid looking in her direction, lest she should
summon me to her side!

One day, as I was riding with Miss Gittens, sh