‘Have you got a side-saddle?’ I asked, dismounting. Mr Coningham spoke now. ‘Don’t you think Mr Cumbermede’s horse a little too frisky for you, Clara? I know so little about you, I can’t tell what you’re fit for.--She used to ride pretty well as a girl,’ he added, turning to me. ‘I’ve not forgotten that,’ I said. ‘I shall walk by her side, you know.’ ‘Shall you?’ she said, with a sly look. ‘Perhaps,’ I suggested, ‘your grandfather would let me have his horse, and then we might have a gallop across the park.’ ‘The best way,’ said Mr Coningham, ‘will be to let the gardener take your horse, while you come in and have some luncheon. We’ll see about the mount after that. My horse has to carry me back in the evening, else I should be happy to join you. She’s a fine creature, that of yours.’ ‘She’s the handiest creature!’ I said--‘a little skittish, but very affectionate, and has a fine mouth. Perhaps she ought to have a curb-bit for you, though, Miss Clara.’ ‘We’ll manage with a snaffle,’ she answered, with, I thought, another sly glance at me, out of eyes sparkling with suppressed merriment and expectation! Her father had gone to find the gardener, and as we stood waiting for him she still stroked the mare’s neck. ‘Are you not afraid of taking cold,’ I said, ‘without your bonnet?’ ‘I never had a cold in my life,’ she returned. ‘That is saying much. You would have me believe you are not made of the same clay as other people.’ ‘Believe anything you like,’ she answered carelessly. ‘Then I do believe it,’ I rejoined. She looked me in the face, took her hand from the mare’s neck, stepped back half-a-foot and looked round, saying-- ‘I wonder where that man can have got to. Oh, here he comes, and papa with him!’ We went across the trim little lawn, which lay waiting for the warmer weather to burst into a profusion of roses, and through a trellised porch entered a shadowy little hall, with heads of stags and foxes, an old-fashioned glass-doored bookcase, and hunting and riding whips, whence we passed into a low-pitched drawing-room, redolent of dried rose-leaves and fresh hyacinths. A little pug-dog, which seemed to have failed in swallowing some big dog’s tongue, jumped up barking from the sheep-skin mat, where he lay before the fire. ‘Stupid pug!’ said Clara. ‘You never know friends from foes! I wonder where my aunt is.’ She left the room. Her father had not followed us. I sat down on the sofa, and began turning over a pretty book bound in red silk, one of the first of the _annual_ tribe, which lay on the table. I was deep in one of its eastern stories when, hearing a slight movement, I looked up, and there sat Clara in a low chair by the window, working at a delicate bit of lace with a needle. She looked somehow as if she had been there an hour at least. I laid down the book with some exclamation. ‘What is the matter, Mr Cumbermede?’ she asked, with the slightest possible glance up from the fine meshes of her work.