careful.'

'We'll economize somewhere else,' he said. 'The mare is yours.'

She suppressed a sigh. Rose was sure of it, and in after days she was
to ask herself many times if she had been to blame in not interpreting
that sigh to Francis. But she had to give Christabel, and Christabel
especially, the loyalty of one woman to another. She would not wrench
from her in a few words the pride Francis took in her, to which she
sacrificed her fears. Rose had the astuteness of a jealousy she would
not own, of a sense of possession she could not discard, and she had
known, from the first moment, that Christabel was afraid of horses and
dreaded the very name of hunting. And Rose divined, too, that if she
herself had not been a horsewoman of some repute, Christabel would
have been less ambitious; she would have been contented with the old
brown horse; but Christabel, too, had an astuteness. No, she could not
have interfered; yet when she first saw Christabel on the mare she was
alarmed to the point of saying:

'Are you sure she's all right? You'd better keep beside her, Francis.'

The mare was fidgety and hot-headed. Christabel's hands were unsteady,
her face was pale, her lips were tight; but she was gay, and Francis
was proud to have her and her mount admired.

Rose looked round in despair. Could no one else see what was so plain
to her? She was tempted to go home. She felt she could not bear the
strain of watching that little figure perched on the grey beast that
looked like a wraith, like a warning. But she did not go, and she
learnt to be glad to have shared with Francis the horror of the moment