No: decidedly that was not a story for Mrs Kirkby, quite as inveterate an admirer of Royalty as Fanny.

Nor did the Major inform his parent that her future daughter-in-law, riding out of Bath in his company before breakfast, dispensed with a chaperon on these expeditions. Mrs Kirkby would have been profoundly shocked, and he was himself doubtful of the propriety of it. But Serena laughed at him, accusing him of being frightened of all the quizzy people in Bath, and he stifled his qualms. It was a delight to be alone with her, an agony to be powerless to check her intrepidity. She would brook no hand upon her bridle: he had learnt that, when, in actual fact, he had caught it above the bit, instinctively, when her mare had reared. The white fury in her face had startled him; her eyes were daggers, and the virago-note sounded in her voice when she shot at him, from between clenched teeth: Take your hand from my rein!” The dangerous moment passed; his hand had dropped; she got the mare under control, and said quite gently: “You must never do so again, Hector. Yes, yes, I understand, but when I cannot manage my horses I will sell them, and take to tatting instead!”

He thought her often reckless in the fences she would ride at; all she said, when he expostulated, was: “Don’t be afraid! I never overface my horses. The last time I did so I was twelve, and Papa laid his hunting-crop across my shoulders: an effective cure!”

He said ruefully: “Can’t you tell me some other way I might be able to check your mad career?”

“Alas, none!” she laughed.

He had nightmarish visions of seeing her lying with a broken neck beside some rasper; and, to make it worse, Fanny said to him, with a trustful smile: “It is so comfortable to know you are with Serena, when she rides out. Major Kirkby! I know she is a splendid horsewoman, but I can never be easy when she has only Fobbing with her, because she is what the hunting people call a bruising rider, and for all Fobbing has been her groom since she was a little girl she never will mind him!”

“I wish to God I might induce her to mind me,” he ejaculated. “But she will not, Lady Spenborough, and when I begged her to consider what must be my position if she should take a bad toss when in my care, she would do nothing but laugh, and advise me to ride off the instant I saw her fall, and swear I was never with her!”

“Oh, dear!” she sighed. She saw that he was really worried, and added soothingly: “Never mind! I daresay we are both of us too anxious. Lord Spenborough, you know, was used to tell me there was no need for me to tease myself over her. He never did so! If he thought she had been reckless, he sometimes swore at her, but I don’t think he was ever really alarmed!”

“That, ma’am, I could not do!”

“Oh, no! I know you never would! Though I daresay she would not be in the least offended if you did,” said Fanny reflectively.

The bright May weather was making Serena increasingly impatient of the quiet life she was obliged to lead. At this time, in any other year, she would have been in the thick of the London season, cramming a dozen engagements into a single day. She did not wish herself in London, and would have recoiled from the thought of breakfasts and balls, but Bath provided no outlet for her overflowing energy. Fanny was content to visit the Pump Room each weekday and the Laura Chapel each Sunday, and found a stroll along the fashionable promenades exercise enough for her constitution; Serena could scarcely endure the unvarying pattern of her days, and felt herself caged in so small a town. She said that Bath was stifling in warm weather, sent to Milverley for her phaeton, and commanded the Major to escort her on a tour of the livery stables of Bath, in search of a pair of job horses fit for her to drive.

He was very willing, fully sympathizing with her desire to escape from the confinement of the town, and realizing that to be driven in a barouche by Fanny’s staid coachman could only bore her. He thought that the phaeton would provide both ladies with an agreeable and unexceptionable amusement. That was before he saw it. But the vehicle which arrived in Bath was not the safe and comfortable phaeton he had expected to see. Serena had omitted to mention the fact that hers was a high-perch phaeton; and when he set eyes on it, and saw the frail body hung directly over the front axle, its bottom fully five feet from the ground, he gave an exclamation of dismay. “Serena! You don’t mean to drive yourself in that?”

“Yes, most certainly I do! But, oh, how much I wish I still had the pair I was used to drive! Match greys, Hector, and such beautiful steppers!”

“Serena—my dearest! I beg you won’t! I know you are an excellent whip, but you could not have a more dangerous carriage!”

“No—if I were not an excellent whip!”

“Even nonpareils have been known to overturn these high-perch phaetons!”

“To be sure they have!” she agreed, with a mischievous smile. “The difficulty of driving them is what lends a spice!”

“Yes, but—My love, you are the only judge of what it is proper for you to do, but to be driving the most sporting of all carriages—Dearest, do females commonly do so?”

“By no means! Only very dashing females!”

“No, don’t joke me about it! Perhaps, in Hyde Park—though I own I should have thought—But in Bath—! You can’t have considered! You would set the whole town talking!”

She looked at him with surprise. “Should I? Yes, very likely!—there is no knowing what people will talk of! But you can’t—surely you can’t expect me to pay the least heed to what they may choose to say of me?”

He was silenced, startled to discover that he did expect this. After a moment, she said coaxingly: “Will you go with me, and see whether I am to be trusted not to overturn myself? I must try these job horses of mine. From what I can see of them I fancy there can be no fear that they will have the smallest desire to bolt with me!”

“You will give Bath enough to stare at without that!” he replied, in a mortified tone, and left her.

It was as well he did so, for quick anger flashed in her eyes, and he might otherwise have had another taste of her temper. His solicitude for her safety, though it might fret her independent spirit, she could understand, and make a push to bear with patience. Criticism of her conduct was an impertinence she would tolerate no better from him than from her cousin Hartley. She had almost uttered a blistering set-down, when he turned on his heel, and was shocked to realize that she had been within an ace of telling him that whatever might be the creed governing the behaviour of the ladies of his set, she was Spenborough’s daughter, and profoundly indifferent to the opinion such persons might hold of her.

It was not to be expected that she would, in this instance, think herself at fault. An easy-going father, famed for his eccentricities, had sanctioned, even encouraged, her sporting proclivities. In much the same spirit as he had told her, facing her first jump, to throw her heart over, he had taught her to handle all the most mettlesome teams in his stables. This very high-perch phaeton had been built for her to his order: disapproval of it was disapproval of him. “Whatever else you may do, my girl,” had said the late Earl, “don’t you be missish!”

The Major having removed himself, Serena’s wrath was vented, in some sort, on Fanny. “Intolerable!” she declared, striding up and down the drawing-room, in her mannishly cut driving dress. “I to pander to the prejudices of a parcel of Bath dowds and prudes! If that is what he thinks I must do when we are married the sooner he learns that I shall not the better it will be for him! Pretty well for Major Kirkby to tell a Carlow that her behaviour is unseemly!”

“Surely, dearest, he cannot have said that!” expostulated Fanny mildly.

“Implied it! What, does he think my credit to stand upon so insecure a footing that to be seen driving a sporting carriage must demolish it?”

“You know he does not. Don’t be vexed with me, Serena, but it is not only a parcel of Bath dowds who think it a fast thing for you to do!” She added hastily, as the blazing eyes turned towards her: “Yes, yes, it is all nonsense, of course! You need not care for it, but I am persuaded that no man could endure to have his wife thought fast!”

“What Papa countenanced need not offend Hector!”

“I am sure it does not. Now, do, do, Serena, be calm! Did not what your papa countenanced very frequently offend his own sister?” She saw the irrepressible smile leap to those stormy eyes, the lips quiver ruefully, and was emboldened to continue: “What he permitted must have been right—indeed, how could I feel otherwise?—but, you know, he was not precisely the same as other people!”

“No! The eccentric Lord Spenborough, eh?”

“Do you think that it vexed him to be called that?” asked Fanny, fearing that she had offended.

“On the contrary! He liked it! As I do! Anyone who chooses to say that I am as eccentric as my father may do so with my good-will! I don’t seek the title, any more than he did: it is what hum-drum, insipid provincials say of anyone who does not heed all their tiresome shibboleths! I do what I do because it is what I wish to do, not, believe me, my dear Fanny, to court the notice of the world!”

“I know—oh, I know!”

“You may, but it appears that Hector does not!” Serena flashed. “His look—the tone in which he spoke—his final words to me—! Intolerable! Upon my word, I am singularly unfortunate in my prétendants: First Rotherham—”