She made no reply to that, and he wondered in silence what was the employment which filled her mornings and fitted her to enjoy with so keen a zest this early ride. The Gloucester up-coach was coming to meet them, the guard tootling merrily on his horn, and a blue and yellow flag—the Whig colours—flying on the roof of the coach, which was crowded with smiling passengers. Vaughan saw the girl’s eyes sparkle as the two coaches passed one another amid a volley of badinage; and demure as she was, he was sure that she had a store of fun within. He wished that she would remove her cheap thread gloves that he might see if her hands were as white as they were small. She was no common person, he was sure of that; her speech was correct, though formal, and her manner was quiet and refined. And her eyes—he must make her look at him again! “You are going to Bristol?” he said. “To stay there?” Perhaps he threw too much feeling into his voice. At any rate the tone of her answer was colder. “Yes,” she said, “I am.” “I am going as far as Chippenham,” he volunteered. “Indeed!” There! He had lost all the ground he had gained. She thought him a possible libertine, who aimed at putting himself on a footing of intimacy with her. And that was the last thing—confound it, he meant that to do her harm was the last thing he had in his mind. It annoyed him that she should think anything of that kind. And he cudgelled his brain for a subject at once safe and sympathetic, without finding one. But either she was not so deeply offended as he fancied, or she thought him sufficiently punished. For presently she addressed him; and he saw that she was ever so little embarrassed. “Would you please to tell me,” she said, in a low voice, “how much I ought to give the coachman?” Oh. bless her! She did not think him a horrid libertine. “You?” he said audaciously. “Why nothing, of course.” “But—but I thought it was usual?” “Not on this road,” he answered, lying resolutely. “Gentlemen are expected to give half a crown, others a shilling. Ladies nothing at all. Sam,” he continued, rising to giddy heights of invention, “would give it back to you, if you offered it.” “Indeed!” He fancied a note of relief in her tone, and judged that shillings were not very plentiful. Then, “Thank you,” she added. “You must think me very ignorant. But I have never travelled.” “You must not say that,” he returned. “Remember the Clapham Stage!” She laughed at the jest, small as it was; and her laugh gave him the most delicious feeling—a sort of lightness within, half exhilaration, half excitement. And of a sudden, emboldened by it, he was grown so foolhardy that there is no knowing what he would not have said, if the streets of Reading had not begun to open before them and display a roadway abnormally thronged.