He stopped to chuckle abstractedly, with ambiguous irony at the contrast between his early lustihood and the decrepitude which had coffined it. Perhaps his nephew winced at the garrulity and such irony as the thick laughter disclosed to him, but he did nothing to divert the talk, nor did Enid, his betrothed, when she filled a glass with whisky and water for the old man, who did but admire it with a sudden satisfaction, and then continued:--
“Well, I was about the age of my nephew yonder, and I had never known what pain or misery was, except when I was nearly beaten by a gipsy in running down Mowland Hill. I farmed and I hunted, and it was understood that I was to marry an amiable and pretty young woman whom my father admired so much that he was willing that nobody should be my wife if not she. But I was in no haste, and indeed I was not fond of women. Others I knew seemed stupid or frivolous. This one was chiefly busy with the church and the poor. I respected her, and I believe now that she would have looked after me well in my old age. She understood me; we had known one another since we were children, and I used to delight to stop my horse to speak to her on a fine day when I was feeling fresh and gay. At last it was agreed that we were soon to be married, and I did not know why to draw back.”
Enid glanced quickly at my host, all the command having left her meek smile, and as quickly dropped her eyes. It seemed to me that the glance betrayed a slender fear or anticipation which she was ashamed of immediately. By his over-rigid tranquillity it may be that her lover gave a similar sign, the only one, and lost on her.
“No,”--the old man paused, as though he would still have liked to unearth some excuse which he might, fifty years back, have made for breaking his troth. “No,” he said, questioningly, “I did not know why to draw back. But one day a woman I had sometimes heard of--she had been away at school and with friends almost continually--came and joined our hunt for the first time--Arabella Meredith. She was over one bank before me, and I thought that Edith would never have done that. We had a good day and a long one. As I was riding back I was pretty well satisfied when with great clatter Miss Meredith rode up to me. She had had a long day and she was hot with her gallop, and yet as she came alongside, I turning my horse so that both curvetted together in the narrow road, she was as fresh as if it had been raining and she just out to take the air, as fresh as a young lime leaf and as clean and, if you understand me, as inhuman in a way, at least I thought so that evening when I was alone. When I saw her eyes, as I soon did, they seemed to belong to somebody else hiding there, and not the woman I had seen jumping.