By this time Job was up on the back seat, and his master started the chestnuts at a pace that only his own pride and temper would have urged upon them. “Oh, la!” cried Miss Pounce, and made a clutch for her hat. She drew the pure keen air into her lungs, felt the wind of their passage blow with the most delicious invigoration against her face. “Oh, la! Was there ever anything so beautiful? ’Tis the first time I have driven by moonlight. ’Tis the first time I have ever driven in a curricle! Oh, ’tis like flying, Sir Jasper! Oh, what a night! I vow I feel like a bird!” The moonlight flooded the road, hedges and trees sparkled and shimmered white as diamonds. The sky was one mighty sapphire, darkly, wonderfully blue. The stars, fainting in the moonlight, looked like the thousand facets of a jewel. “Oh,” cried Pamela again, “I’ll make a head out of it for the opera, I will indeed! Sapphire blue ribbands and frosted silver feathers. ’Tis an inspiration.” This gave Sir Jasper his opening. “Why,” said he, “’tis a monstrous pity such a monstrous fine girl as you should have to work for her living. The moment I set eyes on you this morning, said I to myself----” Pamela interrupted: “Keep your pity and your compliments, sir. They’re wasted on me.” “Why, how now, I like your spirit. I vow, my dear, ’tis you are wasted on such a life.” “What if I like my work, sir?” “You were born to wear ’em--the fine hats--not to make ’em. You were born to be a lady, that’s what I said to myself the moment I clapped eyes on you this morning.” “Foh! I know ’tis gentlemen’s way to start this kind of silly talk whenever they get with a poor girl, but I assure you, sir, I’ve no relish for it. And as for my being a lady, I’ve seen too much of gentlefolk. I wouldn’t thank the Lord to ha’ made me one.” She spoke with her head up and a straight back. “’Tis but gentlemen’s way,” she repeated to herself; “but I’ll let him see he’ll have to respect me, lady or no lady.” She gripped the rail of the curricle, not to give herself courage--for she had no thought there was anything to fear--but to brace herself the better against any further presumption. She was quite unprepared, therefore, when he turned his bloods away from the road leading to Standish Hall, and, with a flourish of the whip, sent them helter-skelter up the hill on the London causeway. The cry she gave was one more of anger than of fear. A solitary pedestrian, coming at a swinging pace along the road which led from Sir Jasper’s residence, heard it, and beheld the curricle as it topped the hill, fantastically silhouetted in black against the moonlit sky. He gave an answering shout, and started running. But he had as much chance of overtaking the gig as if it had been a bird on the flight. He gave up, panting, after a yard or two, stamped his foot, shook his fist at the radiant sky, and started running again in the opposite direction. “Where are you taking me to?”