‘Well, it’s just what she has done,’ said the farmer frankly. ‘We’ll have to get her out of this, missie.’ He hauled himself up to look out through the open door, and shouted: ‘Hi, you! Come and lend a hand with the poor wench here! Lively, now!’

Thus adjured, the thickset young man came back to the coach, asking rather ungraciously what was wanted. He seemed disinclined to lend his aid, and the scarlet-coated young lady, who had been trying unavailingly to move her henchwoman into an easier position, raised a flushed face in which two large gray eyes sparkled with wrath, and uttered: ‘You are the most odious wretch alive, Joseph! Help to lift Sarah out this instant, or I shall tell my grandfather how disobliging you have been!’

‘You may tell him what you choose—if you reach Bath, which you are not now very likely to do, my dear cousin!’ retorted Joseph.

‘You hold your gab, and do what I tell you!’ interposed the farmer. ‘Jump out first, missie: you’ll only be in my way here!’

Miss Trent, pausing only to pick up her cousin’s abandoned rug, allowed herself to be hoisted through the door. Joseph received her from the farmer, and lost no time in setting her down. Her feet sank above the ankles in the snow, but the pessimistic man helped her to reach the road. By the time she had spread the rug out on the snow Sarah had been extricated from the coach, and the coachman was helping the guard to unharness one of the leaders.

Sarah was laid on the rug; Miss Trent, her bonnet fast whitening under the gathering flakes, knelt beside her; and the coachman informed the assembled company that there was no need for anyone to worry, since the guard would ride on at once to Woolhampton, and get some kind of a vehicle to fetch them all in.

This speech greatly incensed the pessimistic man, who demanded to be told when the next coach to Bath was due. The coachman said: ‘Lor’ bless you, sir, we’ll be snowbound a week, I dessay! Nothing won’t get beyond Reading, not if this weather holds!’

There was a general outcry at this; Miss Trent exclaimed: ‘Snowbound a week! But I must reach Bath tomorrow!’

‘Can one hire a chaise in Woolhampton?’ asked Joseph suddenly.

‘Well, you might be able to,’ acknowledged the coachman.

‘I’ll ride in with the guard!’ Joseph decided.

Miss Trent started. Stretching up a hand, she grasped a fold of his coat, saying sharply: ‘Joseph, if you mean to go on by chaise you’ll take me with you?’

‘No, by God!’ he retorted. ‘I didn’t ask you to come to Bath, and I shan’t help you to get there! You may hire a chaise for yourself!’

‘You know I haven’t enough money!’ she said, in a low, trembling voice.

‘Well, it’s no concern of mine,’ he said sulkily. ‘A pretty fool I should be to take you along with me! Besides, you can’t go without your woman.’

Miss Trent’s eyes were bright with tears, but she would not let them fall. She said passionately: ‘I’ll get to Bath if I have to trudge there, Joseph—and then we shall see!’

He responded to this merely with a jeering laugh, and moved away to confer with the guard. Miss Trent made no further attempt to detain him, and in a very few minutes he had ridden off with the guard in the direction of Woolhampton.

With the departure of the guard a new and more fearful mood descended upon the coachman. He became obsessed by the idea that highwaymen would descend upon the wrecked coach, grasped his blunderbuss nervously, started at shadows, and ended by firing the weapon at the mere sound of muffled hoofbeats.

The sound of horses plunging and snorting was almost immediately followed by the appearance round the bend in the road of a curricle and pair, which drew up alongside the coach. A wrathful voice demanded: ‘What in hell’s name do you mean by firing at me, you fat-witted, cow-handed ensign-bearer?’

The coachman, reassured by this form of address, lowered his weapon, and said that he was sure he begged pardon. The gentleman in the curricle, having by this time taken in the group by the wayside, briefly commanded the groom beside him to go to the horses’ heads, and himself jumped down from the curricle, and approached Miss Trent, still kneeling beside her stricken attendant. ‘Can I be of assistance, ma’am?’ he asked. ‘How is she hurt?’

‘I very much fear that she has broken her leg,’ Miss Trent replied worriedly. ‘She is my maid, and I am a wretch to have brought her!’

The gentleman, whose momentary outburst of wrath had swiftly given place to an air of languor which seemed habitual, said calmly: ‘Then I had better take you both up, and convey you to the nearest town.’

Miss Trent said impulsively: ‘Would you do that, sir? I should be so very grateful! Not only on poor Sarah’s account, but on my own! I must reach the next town quickly!’

‘In that case,’ responded the gentleman, rather amused, ‘let us waste not a moment. I’ll drive you into Newbury.’

The farmer and the pessimistic man, both applauding this scheme, at once volunteered to extricate Miss Trent’s baggage from the boot, and to strap it on to the back of the curricle; Sarah was soon lifted up into the carriage, and made as comfortable as possible; and the groom, resigning himself to a most uneasy drive, perched on the baggage behind.

Miss Trent, squeezed between Sarah and her very tall and broad-shouldered rescuer, bade farewell to her old travelling companions, and looked buoyantly towards the future.

This seemed, at the moment, to consist only of snow-flakes. The light, moreover, was beginning to fail, so that she would not have been surprised had the curricle, like the coach, plunged off the road into a drift. But its driver seemed to be very sure of his ability to keep the track, and drove his pair along at a steady pace, his eyes, between narrowed lids, fixed on the road ahead.

‘How well you drive!’ remarked Miss Trent, with a sort of impulsive candour, as engaging as it was naive.

A slight smile touched his lips. ‘Thank you!’

‘I do trust we shall reach Newbury,’ confided Miss Trent. ‘For one thing, I must have poor Sarah attended to, and for another, I must get to Bath!’

‘I collect that it is of importance to you to reach Bath immediately?’

‘Of vital importance!’ asserted Miss Trent.

‘You might be able to hire a chaise,’ he suggested. ‘I fear there will be no stage-coaches running for some days.’

‘That,’ said Miss Trent bitterly, ‘is what my cousin means to do! He can afford it, and he knows very well I cannot, and he won’t take me along with him. He is an odious man!’

‘He sounds quite abominable,’ agreed the gentleman gravely. ‘Is he one of the unfortunates we were obliged to leave by the wayside?’

‘Oh, no! He rode off with the guard to Woolhampton. Trying to steal a march on me, of course!’ She added, on an explanatory note: ‘He has eyes like a pig’s, and his name is Joseph.’

‘How shocking! One scarcely knows whether to feel pity or disgust.’

Miss Trent knew no such uncertainty. ‘He is a hateful wretch!’ she declared.

‘In that case it is unthinkable that he should be permitted to steal a march on you. May I know your name? Mine is Arden.’

‘Yes, of course! I should have told you before,’ she said. ‘I am Sophia Trent. Do you live near here? I have come all the way from Norfolk!’

Never before had Sir Julian Arden announced his identity with so little effect! Indeed, it was seldom that he was put to the trouble of announcing it at all. Not only was he the acknowledged leader of Fashion, a crack shot, and a nonpareil amongst whips: he was quite the most eligible bachelor in Society as well. He had been toadied all his life; every eccentricity was forgiven him; every door flew open at his approach. Mothers of likely daughters had laid siege to him for the past ten years; while the efforts of damsels of marriageable age to engage his interest were as ingenious as they were unavailing. He was so bored that nothing kept his interest alive for more than a fleeting moment. Very little, indeed, had the power to rouse his interest at all. But Miss Trent had achieved this feat quite unconsciously. His name meant nothing to her.

He permitted himself one swift glance down at her before resuming his steady scrutiny of the road ahead. There was not a shadow of guile in the big eyes, which met his in a friendly smile. Miss Trent was merely awaiting an answer. He said: ‘No, I live for the most part in London.’

‘But you did not come from London today, in this weather!’

‘You see,’ he said apologetically, ‘someone laid me odds I would not venture on it.’

‘And you set out, in an open carriage, for such a reason as that! I beg your pardon, but it seems quite nonsensical!’

He appeared to be much struck by this view of the matter. ‘Do you know, ma’am, I believe you are right?’

‘I think,’ said Miss Trent severely, ‘that you are quizzing me. Is your destination Newbury?’

‘My present destination, yes. We shall forget my original one. I daresay I should have been very much bored there.’

‘But your friends will wonder what has become of you!’

‘It need not concern us, however.’

This indifferent answer made her blink, but she forbore to press the matter, and chatted away on a number of unexceptionable topics. She held Sarah in one arm, and appeared to be more concerned for the maid’s comfort than her own, assuring Sir Julian that she thought the whole episode a famous adventure.

‘You see, my home is quite in the country,’ she explained, ‘and nothing exciting ever seems to happen, except when Bertram broke his leg, and Ned was thrown over the donkey’s head into the horse-pond. Thieves did once steal three of my stepfather’s best hens, but we knew nothing about it until the next day, so it was not precisely exciting.’