She was so fair and straight and cleanly drawn; and there was gallantry in her poise and in the way she dared his eyes. Was this the sharp, antagonistic Virginia, this woman ...?
“I simply can’t tell you,” he said, from her stirrup, “how pleased I am to see you, Virginia. And it’s a heartfelt truth dragged out of me by my surprise at seeing you, by my pleasure at being nearly killed by you....”
“That’s all very well, my friend, but it’s up to me to say that kind of thing to you.” She swayed, and waved an intimidating gauntlet across his eyes. “I’ll say them too, but later. People talk about you here and there....”
He was beside her, beneath her. The horse and the lady, a warm picture. She swayed above him in her saddle, she was exquisite. And there was that clearness over her small face, that clear, dry sheen of chill air; and the taut lips, bitten dry by the winter air, hard riding.... The same Virginia, but how different! The same little white face, so white and firm-featured, so proudly set and lightly carried; the same tiny little flesh spot in the furrow of the chin—an inconsiderable little chin it was, you remember?—the same wide blue eyes, so lazy in look, so quick to retort, so light and dark, so kind and mocking, so hard and soft: a soldier’s eyes they were really, but a soldier of fortune. And “Swan and Edgar,” there they were! Ivor laughed to see them, he asked after their unruly health—those twin Virginian curls, tumbling down each cheek in golden-gay cascades from the wide-brimmed, so very rakish, black felt hat! And how it became her in her severe habit, that wide anarchist hat set gallantly about her golden hair!
This sudden meeting of the two former antagonists seemed to bring all the sweetness out of each. It was in their eyes as they smiled at each other in the January gloom of that little lane, with darkening Kare Park on their right, on their left the wintry rolling land of Berkshire, and all about them the pungent smell of sodden earth.
“Do you realise, Ivor, that we’re people of thirty now? Thirty, Ivor!”
“I’m glad enough for you,” he said. She understood. She charmed him by her quick little smile of understanding. He admired her frankly....
“I say, Virginia,” he said eagerly, “we must talk a good deal. I want to hear all about your life since we last spoke together at the Hallidays’ that night. I’ve seen you often in the distance since then, but we’ve somehow never come to grips, it’s just not happened. And whenever I go to the Mont Agel, M. Stutz always tells me that you were there the evening before or that you will not be there for a long time for you are abroad. M. Stutz worships you, Virginia, and quite right he is. But he never tells me anything about you—and now I’ve found you I want an official account of your life, for the rumours about you are so conflicting....” He seemed to plead; and he was really pleading for her to intrude upon his loneliness.
“You haven’t believed the nasty things, have you, Ivor?” she asked him very suddenly. Her eyes were very serious on him. Hard eyes they were, sometimes. Lady Tarlyon knew a lot.
“Oh, stuff!” he smiled at her. “Didn’t we make a pledge, Virginia, the very last time we met? We’ll be friends, we said. Those were our exact words. Well then!”