"I suppose I must be going to look after her," says St. John, dragging himself up very unwillingly. "Brute! she is as cunning as Old Nick! And you are sure you don't mind being left here by yourself for a minute or two?" "Not if there are no horses within reach," she answers, with an innocent smile, which he carries away with him through the sunshine and the fern and the grass. Essie spends full half an hour pushing out, pinching in, smoothing and stroking Miss Blessington's caved-in hat; full a quarter of an hour in picking every grass and sedge and oxeye that grew within reach of her destroying arm; and full another quarter in thinking what a pleasant, manly, straightforward face St. John's is--what a thoroughly terrified face it looked when she met it within an inch of her own nose after her disgraceful _bouleversement_--what a much better height five feet ten is for all practical purposes than six feet four. At the end of the fourth quarter Mr. Gerard returns, with a fire hardly inferior to St. Anthony's in his face; with his hair cleaving damply to his brows, and without the mare. "Would not let me get within half a mile of her! far too knowing! Brute! and now she'll be sure to go and knock the saddle to pieces, and then there'll be the devil to pay!" "I'm so sorry," says Esther, looking up sympathisingly, with her lap full of decapitated oxeyes. "So am I, for your sake: you'll have to ride the cob home." "I shall have to turn into a man, then," she says, glancing rather doubtfully at the male saddle. "No, you won't," (laughing). He rises, and unfastens the cob from the tree-branch to which he has been tied. He has been indulging a naturally greedy disposition--biting off leaves and eating them--until he has made his bit and his mouth as green as green peas. "You must let me put you up, I think," says Gerard bending down and looking into his companion's great, sweet eyes, under the rim of her battered, intoxicating-looking hat. "Must I?" (lowering her eyelids shyly.) "Yes; do you mind much?" "No--o." He stoops and lifts her gently. He is not a Samson or a prize-fighter, and well grown young women of seventeen are not generally feather-weights; but yet it seems to him that the second occupied in raising her from the ground and placing her in the saddle was shorter than other seconds. A man's arms are not sticks or bits of iron, that they can hold a beautiful woman without feeling it. St. John's blood is giving little quick throbs of pleasure. His arms seem to feel the pressure of that pleasant burden long after they have been emptied of it. "I think you must let me hold you," he says, gently and very respectfully passing his arm round her waist. "No, no!" she cries, hastily, pulling herself away--"no need!--no need at all! I shall not fall."