Parva. It was neutral ground, where Farmer Ashby could hold his own with
Sir Peter any day, and speech was unfettered. Somebody remarked that Mrs.
Nevill Tyson looked uncommonly happy in the dog-cart; while Tyson spoke
to nobody and nobody spoke to him. Poor devil! he hadn't at all a pretty
look on that queer bleached face of his. And all the time he kept
twisting his horse's head round in a melancholy sort of way, and backing
into things and out of them, fit to make you swear.

She must have noticed something. They were trotting along, Stanistreet
driving, by a road that ran side by side with the fields scoured by the
hunt, and Tyson could always be seen going recklessly and alone. He could
ride, he could ride! His worst enemy never doubted that.

"It's very odd," said she, "but the people here don't seem to like Nevill
one bit. I suppose they've never seen anything quite like him before."

"I very much doubt if they have."

"_I_ think they're afraid of him. Mother is, I know; she blinks when she
talks to him."

"Does she blink when she talks to me?"

"Of course not--you're different."

"I am not her son-in-law, certainly."

"Do you know, though he's so much older than me--I simply shudder when
I think he's thirty-seven--and so awfully clever, and _so_ bad-tempered,
I'm not in the least afraid of him. And he really has a shocking bad