She was so sorry to have given them all this trouble and anxiety!
Of course she ought to have waited at the fork of the road, but she had
never doubted but she could rejoin them presently on the main road. She
was glad that Miss Euphemia's runaway horse had been stopped without
accident; it would have been dreadful if anything had happened to HER;
Mr. Harcourt seemed so wrapped up in his girls. It was a pity they never
had a son--Ah? Indeed! Then there was a son? So--and father and son had
quarreled? That was so sad. And for some trifling cause, no doubt?
"I believe he married the housemaid," said Grant grimly. "Be
careful!--Allow me."
"It's no use!" said Mrs. Ashwood, flushing with pink impatience, as she
recovered her seat, which a sudden bolt of her mustang had imperiled, "I
really can't make out the tricks of this beast! Thank you," she added,
with a sweet smile, "but I think I can manage him now. I can't see
why he stopped. I'll be more careful. You were saying the son was
married--surely not that boy!"
"Boy!" echoed Grant. "Then you know?"--
"I mean of course he must be a boy--they all grew up here--and it was
only five or six years ago that their parents emigrated," she retorted a
little impatiently. "And what about this creature?"
"Your horse?"
"You know I mean the woman he married. Of course she was older than
he--and caught him?"
"I think there was a year or two difference," said Grant quietly.
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