He set his foot in the stirrup and swung himself up into the saddle. Pompey immediately began to execute an elaborate dance in the roadway, rendering further conversation out of the question. Piers waved his cap in careless adieu, and turned the animal round. In another moment he was tearing down the lane at a gallop, and Avery was left looking after him still with that curious sense of doubt lying cold at her heart. The sight of a black, clerical figure emerging from the churchyard caused her to turn swiftly and pursue her way to the Vicarage gate. But the sounds of those galloping hoofs still wrought within her as she went. They beat upon her spirit with a sense of swift-moving Destiny. CHAPTER XXVIII THE EVESHAM DEVIL "Confound the boy!" said Sir Beverley. He rose up from the black oak settle in the hall with a jerky movement of irritation, and tramped to the front-door. It had been one of those strange soft days that sometimes come in the midst of blustering March storms, and though the sun had long gone down the warmth still lingered. It might have been an evening in May. He opened the great door with an impatient hand. What on earth was the boy doing? Had he gone love-making to Wardenhurst? A grim smile touched the old man's grim lips as this thought occurred to him. That he was not wasting his time nearer home he was fairly convinced; for only that morning he had heard from Lennox Tudor that the mother's help at the Vicarage, over whom in the winter Piers had been inclined to make a fool of himself, had taken one of the children away for a change. It seemed more than probable by this time that Piers' wandering fancy had wholly ceased to stray in her direction, but the news of her absence had caused Sir Beverley undoubted satisfaction. He hoped his boy would not encounter that impertinent, scheming woman again until he was safely engaged to Ina Rose. That this engagement was imminent Sir Beverley was fully convinced. His only wonder was that it had not taken place sooner. The two had been thrown together almost daily during the sojourn of Colonel Rose and his daughter at Mentone, and they had always seemed to enjoy each other's society. Of course Sir Beverley did not like the girl. He actively disliked the whole female species. But she belonged to the county, and she seemed moreover to be a normal healthy young woman who would be the mother of normal healthy children. And this was the sort of wife Piers wanted. For Piers--drat the boy!--was not normal. He inherited a good deal of his Italian grandmother's temperament as well as her beauty. And life was not likely to be a very easy matter for him in consequence. But an ordinary young English wife of his own rank would be a step in the right direction. So reasoned Sir Beverley, who had taken that fatal step in the wrong one in his youth and had never recovered the ground thus lost.