Sybert, on his side, glanced at her curiously from time to time as she flung back a quick reply. With him, first impressions died hard. He had first seen Marcia at a tea, the centre of a laughing group, with all the room paying court to her. She was pretty and attractive, faultlessly gowned, thoroughly at ease. He had, in his thirteen seasons, met many women who played many parts; and the somewhat cynical conclusion he had carried away from the experience was that if a woman be but young and fair she has the gift to know it. But as he watched her now he wondered suddenly if she were quite what he had thought her. It struck him that what he had regarded as over-sophistication was rather the pseudo-sophistication of youth; her occasional crudeness, but the crudeness that comes from lack of experience. She knew nothing of life outside the carefully closed confines of her own small world. And yet he recognized in her a certain reckless spirit of daring, of curiosity toward the world, that responded to a chord in his own nature. He had seen it the night they found Gervasio. It was in her face now as she galloped along against the wind, with her eyes raised to the half-ruined towers of the mediæval monastery. He had not been very lenient toward her, he knew; and her scarcely veiled antagonism had amused him. He felt now, as he watched her, a momentary impulse to draw her out, to mould the direction of her thoughts, to turn her face a new way. After a wild gallop along the crest of a hill she drew up, laughing, to steady her hair, which threatened to come tumbling down about her ears. She dropped the rein loosely on the horse’s neck in order to leave both hands free, and Sybert reached over and took it. ‘See here, young lady,’ he remonstrated, ‘you’re going to take a cropper some day if you ride like that.’ She glanced back with a quick retort on her lips, but his expression disarmed her. He was not watching her with his usual critical look. She changed the words into a laugh. ‘Do you know what you make me feel like doing, Mr. Sybert? Giving Lil the reins and galloping down that hill there with my hands in the air.’ ‘Perhaps I would better keep the reins in my own hands,’ was his cool proposition. ‘I never knew any one who could rouse so much latent antagonism in a person as you can! You never say a word but I feel like doing exactly the opposite.’ ‘It’s well to know it. I shall frame my future suggestions accordingly.’ Marcia settled her hat and stretched out her hand. He returned the reins with a show of doubt. ‘Can I trust you to restrain your impulses?’ he inquired, with his eyes on the declivity before them. She gathered up the reins, but made no movement to go on. Instead she half-turned in the saddle and looked behind.