troubled by no plans for the future; she had no regret
for anything which had happened in the past. The vague questions which
had stirred her--why had she been afraid of him?--was the failure of her
marriage her fault?--for these questions she had no room. She did not
think at all, she only felt that her heart was anchored to a rock.

CHAPTER XIV

Given a driver who is at once inexperienced and short-sighted, a fresh
horse harnessed to a light dog-cart, a dark night and a narrow gateway,
and the result may be forecast without much rashness. Mallinson upset his
wife and the cart just within the entrance to Garples. Luckily the drive
was bordered by thick shrubs of laurel, so that Clarice was only shaken
and dazed. She sat in the middle of a bush vaguely reflecting that her
heart was anchored to a rock and yet her husband had spilled her out of a
dog-cart. Between the incident and her state of mind immediately
preceding it, she recognised an incongruity which she merely felt to be
in some way significant. Fielding and Captain Le Mesurier picked her out
of the bush before she had time to examine into its significance. All she
said was, 'It's so like him.'

'Yes, hang the fellow!' said the Captain, and under his breath he
launched imprecations at all 'those writer chaps.'

Mallinson raised himself from a bed of mould upon the opposite side of
the drive and apologised. Captain Le Mesurier bluntly cut short the
apology. 'Why didn't you say you couldn't drive? I can't. Who's ashamed
of it? You might have broken your wife's neck.'

'I might, and my own too,' replied Mallinson in a tone not a whit less
aggrieved.

Captain Le Mesurier raised his eyes to the heavens with the apoplectic
look which comes of an intense desire to swear, and the repressive
presence of ladies. 'Will you kindly sit on the horse's head until you
are told to get up? I want the groom to help here,' he said, as soon as
he found words tolerable to feminine ears. A groom was already occupying
the position designated, but he rose with alacrity and Mallinson silently
took his place and sat there until the harness was loosed.

Fielding's visit, however, had another consequence beyond the upsetting
of a gig. A few days later an epigram was circulating through the
constituency. The squires passed it on with a smack of the tongue; it had
a flavour, to their thinking, which was of the town. The epigram was
this: 'Lord Cranston lives a business life of