Ten minutes more, and the Melford steep street and railway bridge are left behind them, they are trotting with smooth briskness between the nutty, briary hedgerows. At first the silence which Gerard had guaranteed threatens to remain unbroken; it is infringed at last by Esther, out of whose heart the fair late breeze, the happy yellow stillness, and lastly, the proximity to and solitude with the beloved one, are smoothing all angry creases. ("If he did speak lightly of me," she thinks, sorrowfully, "we shall not have the chance of many more drives together; whether he think ill or well, highly or meanly, of me, let me be happy with him while I may!") "What a pleasant vehicle this would be to make a driving tour in!" "A tour of all the cathedral towns throughout England, as the Heir of Redclyffe proposed spending his honeymoon in making!" She laughs. "I remember long ago the _Saturday Review_ saying of some she-novelist's men, that they were like old governesses in trousers: it was not a bad simile, was it?" Silence falls on them again; broken this time by Gerard, who, turning abruptly towards his companion, says, "You are _not_ bored by my society, Miss Craven? Unless you are cast in a mould different from the rest of humanity, you _must_ be bored by the society of the Misses De Grey. Why, then, were you so resolute this morning in rejecting the one and accepting the other? This is the problem that has been puzzling me for the last half mile." She hangs her head like a scolded school-child. "What _was_ your motive?" "A prudential one, partly," she answers, rallying her spirits. "I knew that in after life I should have small experience of T.-carts and such rich man's luxuries, so I thought it wiser not to run the risk of contracting a taste for them." "How do you know what the experience of your after life may be?" "One may argue from the known to the unknown; I can give a pretty shrewd guess." "And was that your sole motive?" "What does it matter to you whether it was or not?" "Nothing; except that, to a philosophical mind like mine, woman and her caprices are an interesting psychological study. Did you ever hear of an essay of Addison's entitled 'Dissection of a Coquette's Heart?'" "I am not a coquette," she cries, indignantly, answering the indirect accusation directly. "I did not say you were. I hope you are not--I hope to God you are not!" he answers, with more vehemence than the occasion seems to demand. "And yet," she says, feeling oppressed by the solemnity of his manner and trying to speak lightly, "I have heard it said that no woman can be thoroughly attractive who is not something of a flirt." "I had rather that she should be thoroughly _un_attractive then," he answers, shortly and grimly. "Men always wish to have a monopoly of all pleasant sins," she retorts, a little cynically.