Mr. Van Torp had come to meet Lady Maud. The place was lonely and conveniently situated, being about half-way between Oxley Paddox and Craythew, on Mr. Van Torp's land, which was so thoroughly protected against trespassers and reporters by wire fences and special watchmen that there was little danger of any one getting within the guarded boundary. On the side towards Craythew there was a gate with a patent lock, to which Lady Maud had a key.
Mr. Van Torp was at the meeting-place at least a quarter of an hour before the appointed time. His horse only moved a short step every now and then, eating his way slowly across the grass, and his rider sat sideways, resting his elbows on his knees and staring at nothing particular, with that perfectly wooden expression of his which indicated profound thought.
But his senses were acutely awake, and he caught the distant sound of hoofs on the soft woodland path just a second before his horse lifted his head and pricked his ears. Mr. Van Torp did not slip to the ground, however, and he hardly changed his position. Half a dozen young pheasants hurled themselves noisily out of the wood on the other side of the ruin, and scattered again as they saw him, to perch on the higher boughs of the trees not far off instead of settling on the sward. A moment later Lady Maud appeared, on a lanky and elderly thoroughbred that had been her own long before her marriage. Her old-fashioned habit was evidently of the same period too; it had been made before the modern age of skirted coats, and fitted her figure in a way that would have excited open disapproval and secret admiration in Rotten Row. But she never rode in town, so that it did not matter; and, besides, Lady Maud did not care.
Mr. Van Torp raised his hat in a very un-English way, and at the same time, apparently out of respect for his friend, he went so far as to change his seat a little by laying his right knee over the pommel and sticking his left foot into the stirrup, so that he sat like a woman. Lady Maud drew up on his off side and they shook hands.
'You look rather comfortable,' she said, and the happy ripple was in her voice.
'Why, yes. There's nothing else to sit on, and the grass is wet. Do you want to get off?'
