Often a horse would slip and fall, flinging its stiffened postillion; and then there would be bitter delay, and the unbuckling of straps with blue ineffectual hands, and much breathing of oaths and stamping of deadened feet; while low in the desolate welkin the sun looked on with dim unconcerned eye, as if it were some senile monarch, conscious only of private cosiness while gazing through a frosted window on a little township of suffering. And so on again presently, crashing and pounding, the boys towelling their cattle for mere exercise of their own numbed fingers, the cat-ice splintering in the ruts, the chaise dancing wildly in its straps. Fortunately there was no snow; though the sky bore evidence in its appearance of such garnered stores of it as could, at a nod, sow the world with winter. It was an hour past noon when our party drew up, in no very sweet temper, at the door of the “Catherine Wheel” at Egham, where they were to stop for dinner. They thawed a little during the meal, and were even amiable, one with the other, after a guarded fashion. Sir David was the victim of nothing more than some physical discomfort; but his two companions suffered yet under a species of misunderstanding that circumstance only could put an end to; and in the meanwhile it was inevitable that their mutual relations should be marked by some coldness and embarrassment. The “Regulator” coach, from Exeter to London, clattered up in the frost and stopped to change horses while they were at table. They heard the half-dead “outsides” stumping about in the bar and calling for mulled port and Nantes brandy to warm them on to the next stage; and had a glimpse, through the lattice, of the vehicle itself--chocolate in hue and traced all over with gilt lettering like a Christmas calendar; of a happy-faced young woman who sat, hugging a little boy in her lap, on the “gammon-board” of the roof; and of a kit-kat presentment of an arrogant-visaged young gentleman, with a brown silk handkerchief tied about his head, who leaned out of the drag window, to the huge discomfort of the other “insides,” and amused himself by endeavouring to scrape with a tooth-pick the paint off the bull’s head on the panel of the door. This latter sight sent Mr. Tuke back in his chair with an involuntary start--which Miss Royston noticed. “Do you know the gentleman?” she said, jumping to a conclusion. “I? Yes--I recognize him, I think.” “Oh, indeed! And who is he, may I ask?” “’Tis Dunlone--Lord Dunlone. I have met him. We were in the way of being friends, in fact.” He thought to himself: “The fellow goes townwards from his Cornish place. ’Tis in sort with his cursed parsimony to stage it like a provident cit.” “I will excuse you, if you wish to go speak with him,” said Miss Angela. “Not in the least. I should poorly requite myself for the loss of your society.”