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Updated: May 10, 2025
And she saw me that night to the hedge-gap, having her three great boar-hounds with her, to company her home again. But, indeed, I followed her afterwards, very silent, until I saw her safe into the Hall; for I would not have her alone in the night; though she believed that I was then far away on the country road.
She had been given an unexpected holiday, and was running home across the fresh, spring-green grass-fields, thinking to take her people by surprise, when she came to a hedge-gap whence you look down into a steep-banked lane. And at the foot of the bank Richard McBirney was sitting with his arm round her sister Lizzie's waist.
Oh joy, Dobbin, dear, to jog on, and go soft, No row, no obstruction by hedge-gap or rail. Ah, then they discovered the pace and the pith Of Dobbin the dull, and his mount, Farmer SMITH. Now all seems smooth sailing! Hillo! What was that? A squeak? Nay, it sounds like a chorus of squeaks! Don't shy, my dear Dobbin you'll shake off my hat. The lane here grows narrow. Who's there? No one speaks.
On winged feet she flew back through the hedge-gap and ordered Ragtime saddled once more; yet when she touched that splendid beast with the crop and sent him at a gallop down the drive, there was no longer any sting in the lash.
And always I went inward by the hedge-gap; and oft I should find the Lady Mirdath walking in that part of the woods; but always with her great boar-hounds about her; for I had begged that she do this thing for her sweet safety; and she to seem wishful to pleasure me; but truly to be just so oft utter perverse in diverse matters; and to strive to plague me, as though she would discover how much I would endure and how far she might go to anger me.
And I caught Mirdath the Beautiful by her shoulders, and shook her very soundly, in my anger. And afterward, I sent the maid onward; and she, having no word from her Mistress to stay, went forward a little; and in this fashion we came at last to the hedge-gap, with the Lady Mirdath very hushed; but yet walking anigh to me, as that she had some secret pleasure of my nearness.
And at the end of the first half-hour following her truancy she might have yielded to the impulse, pleading the first flimsy excuse which would have purchased an opportunity to reconstruct that hysterically mad minute or two with him whom she had just left a little before in the hedge-gap, had not Miriam Burrell, at the very moment of decision, stung her into realization of what meaning such an act might convey to other less generous minds.
But when Steve finally asked for Devereau Garry Devereau, who had followed him to the hedge-gap that day and laid one hand upon his bowed, shamed shoulder the light went from Barbara's eyes. And Stephen O'Mara, who did not understand at first the quick hurt which entered them, stopped smiling, too. "I liked him," Steve said simply. "I've always remembered and liked him.
And if the spur that brightened her eyes and quickened her laughter was, after all, nothing more nor less than a hot contempt for herself for the stolen moment in the hedge-gap and the inexplicable impulse upon which she had all but acted following it her merriment was none the less a palpitant thing.
And, truly, well I remember how that one night, coming to the hedge-gap, I saw two country-maids come thence out from the woods of Sir Jarles'; but they were naught to me, and I would have gone upward through the gap, as ever; only that, as they passed me, they curtseyed somewhat over-graceful for rough wenches.
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