"
Mrs. Oke paused, and turned her face towards me with the absent smile in
her thin cheeks: her eyes no longer had that distant look; they were
strangely eager and fixed. I did not know what to answer; this woman
positively frightened me. We remained for a moment in that same place, with
the sunlight dying away in crimson ripples on the heather, gilding the
yellow banks, the black waters of the pond, surrounded by thin rushes, and
the yellow gravel-pits; while the wind blew in our faces and bent the
ragged warped bluish tops of the firs. Then Mrs. Oke touched the horse, and
off we went at a furious pace. We did not exchange a single word, I think,
on the way home. Mrs. Oke sat with her eyes fixed on the reins, breaking
the silence now and then only by a word to the horse, urging him to an even
more furious pace. The people we met along the roads must have thought that
the horse was running away, unless they noticed Mrs. Oke's calm manner and
the look of excited enjoyment in her face. To me it seemed that I was in
the hands of a madwoman, and I quietly prepared myself for being upset or
dashed against a cart. It had turned cold, and the draught was icy in our
faces when we got within sight of the red gables and high chimney-stacks of
Okehurst.
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