he had learnt to
sit with grace, if not with confidence, and she was too proud to
show the discomfort she felt. Her father had bought for her use the
showiest chestnut to be had in the market; and as he wished her to
ride sometimes with him, if oftener with only the groom at her heels,
and as, again, she had honestly set herself to please him, she used
to mount her Red Coat, as she called her beast, punctually every
other day, and carry her dislike to the exercise as the penance it was
fitting she should perform. And besides all this, that devouring
fever in her blood, that oppressive consciousness rather than active
remembrance, lying always at the back of her life, was best soothed
by long hours alone in the open air. For when she had only the groom
behind her, Leam--to whom all men were as yet powers undesignated,
and a man of low degree a mere animal that made intelligible sounds
on occasions and was of a little more use than a dog--forgot him
altogether, and was as much alone as if he had not been there.

Once or twice before the hegira of the gentry she had chanced to
meet Major Harrowby in her rides, and he had turned with her and
accompanied her, which was half a pain to' Leam and half a pleasure.
The pain was connected with her reins and her stirrups, her saddle and
the girths, the restless way in which the chestnut moved his ears,
the discomposing toss of his small impatient head, the snorts which
frightened her as the heralds of an outbreak, and his inclination
to dance sideways into the hedge rather than walk discreetly in the
middle of the road, whereby her seat was disturbed and her courage
tried, she all the while not liking to show that she was ill at
ease. The pleasure was personal, arising from the strange sense of
protection that she felt in Edgar's society and the charming way in
which he talked to her. He had seen a great deal, and he had a facile
tongue, and between fact and color, memory and make-up, his stories
were delightful. Also, after the manner of men who seek to influence a
young girl's mind and heart, he lent her books to read, and he marked
his favorite passages, which he discussed afterward. They were not
passages of abstract thought and impersonal sentiment, like the
penciled notes in Alick Corfield's literary loans, but scenes of
passion or of pathos, going straight to the heart of youth, which
feels rather than reflects, or descriptions of places which were
equal to pictures of huma