Claire was on, a
tall bright bay always a little ahead of Lee, and he was constantly
urging his horse forward. "Peyton went to the Green Spring Valley for a
hunt party last night," she told him; "he said he'd be back." Why,
then, he almost exclaimed, he, Lee, had been successful with Mina Raff.
Instead he said that she would undoubtedly be glad of that. "Oh, yes!
But neither of us is very much excited about it just now; he is too
much like a ball on a rubber string; and if I were a man I'd hate to
resemble that. I won't try to hide from you that I've lost something;
still, I have him and Mina hasn't. They shouldn't have hesitated, Lee;
that was what spoiled it, in the end beat them. It wasn't strong enough
to carry them away and damn the consequences. There is always something
to admire in that, even if you suffer from it."
The night had been warm, and the road, the footing, was treacherous
with loosened stones and mud. The horses, mounting a hill, picked their
way carefully; and Lee Randon gazed over his shoulder into the valley
below. He saw it through a screen of bare wet maple branches--a
dripping brown meadow lightly wreathed in blue mist, sedgy undergrowth
along water and the further ranges of hills merged in shifting clouds.
A shaft of sunlight, pale and without warmth, illuminated with its
emphasis an undistinguished and barren spot. On the meadows sloping to
the south there were indefinite spaces of green.
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