you.'

Sir Lukin's round of visits drew him at night to Lady Singleby's, where
he sighted the identical young lady of his thoughts, Miss Paynham,
temporarily 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 successfull