Bella leaned back in her carriage, holding up the daintiest lace-flounced parasol, just big enough to shelter the tip of her nose, while the captain’s sleek bay trotted at her side, and arched his neck, and sniffed the air, and gave himself resentful airs at being forced to suit his pace to the jog-trot of the over-fed carriage horses. They passed along the village street, under the cloudless blue, and Bella felt that the eye of the world--her little world--was upon them. Miss Coyle was clipping her solitary standard rose tree as they went by, and stopped, scissors in hand, to stare at them. Cyril Culverhouse was just coming out of his garden gate, with a black book under his arm. Clementina and Flora Scratchell were flattening their noses against the parlour window as usual. That vision of sisterly noses always greeted Bella as she passed. This time she took care to be looking another way. She did not want Captain Standish to know that her ‘people’ lived in the shabbiest house in the village. The captain was far too good a horseman to keep up that ‘‘ammer, ‘ammer, on the ‘ard ‘igh road,’ of which the traditional cockney complained. There were plenty of grassy bits by the wayside where he was able to save his horse’s feet--stretches of open down on which he could indulge himself with a gallop. Sometimes he dropped behind and walked his horse for a mile or so, and then startled Bella by descending upon her suddenly from some grassy height, fresh and cool, and riding with a rein as light as a silken thread. ‘What a lovely horse that is!’ exclaimed Bella. ‘He seems able to do anything.’ ‘He was able to throw most of his riders before I got him,’ answered the captain; ‘but he’s tame enough now.’ There was a roll in the animal’s eye, and a liberal display of white, which went far to confirm this account of his antecedents. Captain Standish was riding beside the carriage when they entered that newly-built suburb where the plutocracy of Great Yafford had built their habitations. They passed the Porkmans’ Grange, with its red walls, Tudor casements, and impossible gables, the Timperley Manor House, with its Norman sugar-loaf towers, and the Wigzells’ Italian Gothic Villa, all white stucco, terraced walks and scarlet geraniums. Bella, like Cæsar, felt that her triumph was complete. Captain Standish only left her at the door of the club-house. ‘Well, little woman,’ cried Mr. Piper, when he came tumbling into the barouche, with his white beaver hat at the back of his head, and his brown and yellow bandanna on active service. ‘You haven’t kept me waiting--no, not at all, neither.’ Bella told him all about Captain Standish’s visit. She was radiant with this small social success.