A sweet, gentle
thing, with dark, mild eyes, and I was mad to drive it--mad, cousin! But
Sir Lupus learned that it had trodden and gored a man, and put me on my
honor not to drive it. And all day Sir Lupus was away at Kingsborough
for his rents and I free to drive the sledge, ... and I was mad to do
it--and could not. And the pretty beast stabled with our horses, and
every day I might have driven it.... I never did.... It hurts yet,
cousin.... How strange is it that to us the single word, 'honor,' blocks
the road and makes the King's own highway no thorough-fare forever!"
She gathered bridle nervously, and we launched our horses through a
willow fringe and away over a soft, sandy intervale, riding knee to knee
till the wind whistled in our ears and the sand rose fountain high at
every stride of our bounding horses.
"Ah!" she sighed, drawing bridle. "That clears the heart of silly
troubles. Was it not glorious? Like a plunge to the throat in an
icy pool!"
Her face, radiant, transfigured, was turned to the north, where,
glittering under the westward sun, the sunny waters of the Vlaie
sparkled between green reeds and rushes. Beyond, smoky blue mountains
tumbled into two uneven walls, spread southeast and southwest, flanking
the flat valley of the Vlaie.
Thousands of blackbirds chattered and croaked and trilled and whistled
in the reeds, flitting upward, with a flash of scarlet on their wings;
hovering, dropping again amid a ceaseless chorus from the half-hidden
flock.
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