"
On other mornings, she would ride with Winton, who would come for her,
leaving her again at her door after their outings. One day, after a
ride in Richmond Park, where the horse-chestnuts were just coming
into flower, they had late breakfast on the veranda of a hotel before
starting for home. Some fruit-trees were still in blossom just below
them, and the sunlight showering down from a blue sky brightened to
silver the windings of the river, and to gold the budding leaves of the
oak-trees. Winton, smoking his after-breakfast cigar, stared down across
the tops of those trees toward the river and the wooded fields beyond.
Stealing a glance at him, Gyp said very softly:
"Did you ever ride with my mother, Dad?"
"Only once--the very ride we've been to-day. She was on a black mare; I
had a chestnut--" Yes, in that grove on the little hill, which they had
ridden through that morning, he had dismounted and stood beside her.
Gyp stretched her hand across the table and laid it on his.
"Tell me about her, dear. Was she beautiful?"
"Yes."
"Dark? Tall?"
"Very like you, Gyp. A little--a little"--he did not know how to
describe that difference--"a little more foreign-looking perhaps. One of
her grandmothers was Italian, you know."
"How did you come to love her? Suddenly?"
"As suddenly as"--he drew his hand away and laid it on the veranda
rail--"as that sun came on my hand.
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