Nevertheless, she laid a detaining hand on her brother's arm as he was about to go indoors.
"Wait, Horace! You-you will ride with Di more frequently, will you not?"
He looked surprised.
"You are uneasy, Betty?"
"Oh-uneasy-! Well, yes-a little. I do not like her to go alone with a groom, and we do not know this man."
"My dear! I had the very highest references from Sir Hugh Grandison, who, I am sure, would never recommend anyone untrustworthy. Why, you saw the letter yourself!"
"Yes, yes. Doubtless I am very stupid. But you will ride with her after to-day, will you not?"
"Certainly I will accompany my daughter when I can spare the time," he replied with dignity, and with that she had to be content.
Diana rode leisurely along the lane, beside great trees and hedges that were a blaze of riotous colour. Autumn had turned the leaves dull gold and flame, mellow brown and deepest red, with flaming orange intermingled, and touches of copper here and there where some beech tree stood. The lane was like a fairy picture, too gorgeous to be real; the trees, meeting overhead, but let the sunlight through in patches, so that the dusty road beneath was mottled with gold.
The hedges retained their greenness, and where there was a gap a vista of fields presented itself. And then they came upon a clump of berries, black and red, growing the other side of the little stream that meandered along the lane in a ditch. Diana drew up and addressed her companion.
"See, Harper-there are berries! We need go no further." She changed the reins to her right hand and made as if to spring down.
"The place I spoke of is but a short way on, miss," ventured the man, keeping his seat.
She paused.
"But why will these not suffice?"
"Well, miss, if you like. But those others were a deal finer. It seems a pity not to get some."
Diana looked doubtfully along the road.
"'Tis not far?"
"No, miss; but another quarter of a mile, and then down the track by the wood."
Still she hesitated.
"I do not want to be late," she demurred.
"No, miss, of course not. I only thought as how we might come back by way of Chorly Fields."
"Round by the mill? H'm." . . .
"Yes, miss. Then as soon as we get past it there is a clear stretch of turf almost up to the house."
Her eye brightened.
"A gallop? Very well! But let us hurry on."
She touched the cob with her heel, and they trotted on briskly out of the leafy canopy along the road with blue sky above and pasture land around. After a little while the wood came in sight, and in a minute they were riding down the track at right angles to the road.