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But I was not allowed to enjoy this illusion long. One day when I innocently asked him if he found my hands improving, he turned upon me his off sardonic eye. ‘You’ll never improve, old sack-of-beans’ (for he had come to address me with a freedom I burned to resent); ‘hands! why, you’re sawing my mouth off all the time. And your feet “home,” and tickling me under my shoulders at every stride–why, I’m half ashamed to be seen about with you.’

I was deeply hurt. ‘I will spare you for the future,’ I said coldly; ‘this is my last appearance.’

‘Nonsense,’ he said, ‘you needn’t show temper over it. Surely, if I can put up with it, you can! But we will make a new compact.’ (I never knew such a beast as he was for bargains!) ‘You only worry me by interfering with the reins. Let ’em out, and leave everything to me. Just mention from time to time where you want to go, and I’ll attend to it,–if I’ve nothing better to do.’

I felt that such an understanding was destructive of all dignity, subverting, as it did, the natural relations between horse and rider; but I had hardly any self-respect left, and I consented, since I saw no way of refusing. And on the whole, I cannot say, even now, that I had any grave reason for finding fault with the use Brutus made of my concessions; he showed more tact than I could have expected in disguising the merely nominal nature of my authority.

I had only one serious complaint against him, which was that he had a habit of breaking suddenly away, with a merely formal apology, to exchange equine civilities with some cob or mare, to whose owner I was a perfect stranger, thus driving me to invent the most desperate excuses to cover my seeming intrusion: but I managed to account for it in various ways, and even made a few acquaintances in this irregular and involuntary manner. I could have wished he had been a less susceptible animal, for, though his flirtations were merely Platonic, it is rather humiliating to have to play ‘gooseberry’ to one’s own horse–a part which I was constantly being called upon to perform!

As it happened, Diana was away in Paris that Easter, and we had not met since my appearance in the Row; but I knew she would be in town again shortly, and with consummate diplomacy I began to excite Brutus’s curiosity by sundry careless, half-slighting allusions to Miss Chetwynd’s little mare, Wild Rose. ‘She’s too frisky for my taste,’ I said, ‘but she’s been a good deal admired, though I dare say you wouldn’t be particularly struck by her.’

So that, on the first afternoon of Diana’s return to the Row, I found it easy, under cover of giving Brutus an opportunity of forming an opinion, to prevail on him to carry me to her side. Diana, who was with a certain Lady Verney, her chaperon, welcomed me with a charming smile.

‘I had no idea you could ride so well,’ she said, ‘you manage that beautiful horse of yours so very easily–with such light hands, too.’

This was not irony, for I could now give my whole mind to my seat; and, as I never interfered at all with the steering apparatus, my hands must have seemed the perfection of lightness.

‘He wants delicate handling,’ I answered carelessly, ‘but he goes very well with me.’

‘I wish you would let me try his paces some morning, Pulvertoft,’ struck in a Colonel Cockshott, who was riding with them, and whom I knew slightly: ‘I’ve a notion he would go better on the curb.’

‘I shall be very happy,’ I began, when, just in time, I noticed a warning depression in Brutus’s ears. The Colonel rode about sixteen stone, and with spurs! ‘I mean,’ I added hastily, ‘I should have been–only, to tell you the truth, I couldn’t conscientiously trust any one on him but myself.’