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‘Whinnying?’ he said. ‘They’re laughing, that’s what they’re doing–and no wonder!’

‘Oh!’ said I, ‘and what’s the joke?’

‘Why, you are!’ he replied. ‘You don’t suppose you take them in, do you? They know all about you, bless your heart!’

‘Oh, do they?’ I said blankly. This brute took a positive pleasure, I believe, in reducing my self-esteem.

‘I dare say it has got about through Wild Rose,’ he continued. ‘She was immensely tickled when I told her. I’m afraid she must have been feeling rather dull all these days, by the bye.’

I felt an unworthy impulse to take his conceit down as he had lowered mine.

‘Not so very, I think,’ I said. ‘She seemed to me to find that brown hunter of Colonel Cockshott’s a very agreeable substitute.’

Late as it is for reparation, I must acknowledge with shame that in uttering this insinuation, I did that poor little mare (for whom I entertained the highest respect) a shameful injustice; and I should like to state here, in the most solemn and emphatic manner, my sincere belief that, from first to last, she conducted herself in a manner that should have shielded her from all calumny.

It was only a mean desire to retaliate, a petty and ignoble spite, that prompted me thus to poison Brutus’s confidence, and I regretted the words as soon as I had uttered them.

‘That beast!’ he said, starting as if I had touched him with a whip–a thing I never used–‘why, he hasn’t two ideas in his great fiddle-head. The only sort of officer he ought to carry is a Salvationist!’

‘I grant he has not your personal advantages and charm of manner,’ I said. ‘No doubt I was wrong to say anything about it.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘you–you have done me a service,’ and he relapsed into a sombre silence.

I was riding with Diana as usual, and was about to express my delight at being able to resume our companionship, when her mare drew slightly ahead and lashed out suddenly, catching me on the left leg, and causing intense agony for the moment.

Diana showed the sweetest concern, imploring me to go home in a cab at once, while her groom took charge of Brutus. I declined the cab; but, as my leg was really painful, and Brutus was showing an impatience I dared not disregard, I had to leave her side.

On our way home, Brutus said moodily, ‘It is all 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.