but when it got along into September the weather was divine, and they
spent nearly the whole time out of doors, driving over the hills. They
got an old horse from a native, and they hunted out a rickety buggy from
the carriage-house, and they went wherever the road led. They went mostly
at a walk, and that suited the horse exactly, as well as Mrs. Ormond, who
had no faith in Ormond's driving, and wanted to go at a pace that would
give her a chance to jump out safely if anything happened. They put their
hats in the front of the buggy, and went about in their bare heads. The
country people got used to them, and were not scandalized by their
appearance, though they were both getting a little gray, and must have
looked as if they were old enough to know better.

"They were not really old, as age goes nowadays: he was not more
than forty-two or -three, and she was still in the late thirties. In
fact, they were

"Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita--

"in that hour when life, and the conceit of life, is strongest, and when
it feels as if it might go on forever. Women are not very articulate
about such things, and it was probably Ormond who put their feeling into
words, though she recognized at once that it was her feeling, and shrank
from it as if it were something wicked, that they would be punished for;
so that one day, when he said suddenly, 'Jenny, I don't feel as if I
could ever die,' she scolded him for it. Poor women!" said Wanhope,
musingly, "they are not always cross when they scold. It is often the
expression of their anxieties, their forebodings, their sex-timidities.
They are always in double the danger that men are, and their nerves
double that danger again. Who was that famous _salonniere_--Mme.
Geoffrin, was it?--that Marmontel says always scolded her friends when