“The Headless Horseman?” he said. “Yes, I believe there is some such legend.”

“But is it true?” asked Eustacie breathlessly.

“Why, no, of course not!”

“You would not then be afraid to ride through the Forest at night?”

“Not in the least. I’ve often done so, and never encountered a headless horseman, I assure you!”

“Thank you,” said Eustacie. “Thank you very much!”

He looked a little surprised, but as she said nothing more very soon forgot the episode.

“My cousin Tristram,” Eustacie told Lucy, “says that it is nothing but a legend. I shall not regard it.”

Chapter Three

Had Sir Tristram been less preoccupied he might have found something to wonder at in his cousin’s sudden docility. As it was, he was much too busy unravelling the intricacies of Sylvester’s affairs with Mr Pickering to pay any heed to Eustacie’s change of front. If he thought about it at all he supposed merely that she had recovered from a fit of tantrums, and was heartily glad of it. He had half expected her to raise objections to his plan to convey her to Bath on the day after her grandfather’s burial, but when he broached the matter to her she listened to him with folded hands and downcast eyes, and answered never a word. A man more learned in female wiles might have found this circumstance suspicious; Sir Tristram was only grateful. He himself would be returning to Lavenham Court, but he told Eustacie that he did not expect to be obliged to remain for more than a week or two, after which time he would join the household in Bath, and set forward the marriage arrangements. Eustacie curtseyed politely.

She did not attend Sylvester’s funeral, which took place on the third day after his death, but busied herself instead with choosing from her wardrobe the garments she considered most suited to her new calling, and directing Lucy how to bestow them in the two bandboxes. Lucy, too devoted to her glamorous young mistress to think of betraying her, but very much alarmed at the idea of all the dangers she might encounter on her solitary journey, sniffed dolefully as she folded caracos and fichus and said that she would almost prefer to accompany Miss, braving the terror of the Headless Horseman, than be left behind to face Sir Tristram’s wrath. Eustacie, feeling that to take her maid with her would be to destroy at a blow all the romance of the adventure, told her to pretend the most complete ignorance of the affair, and promised that she would send for her to London at the first opportunity.

The forlorn sight of snowflakes drifting down from a leaden sky affected Lucy with a sense of even deeper foreboding, but only inspired her mistress to say she would wear her fur-lined cloak after all, and the beaver hat with the crimson plume.

Her actual escape from the Court was accomplished without the least difficulty, the servants having gone to bed, and Sir Tristram being shut up in the library with Beau Lavenham, who had come over from the Dower House to dine with his cousins. Eustacie had excused herself from their company soon after dinner, and gone up to her bedchamber. At eleven o’clock, looking quite enchanting in her riding-dress and crimson cloak and wide-brimmed beaver, with its red feather curling over to mingle with her dark, silky curls, she tiptoed down the back stairs, holding up her skirts in one hand and in the other grasping her whip and gloves. Behind her tottered the shrinking Lucy, carrying the two bandboxes and a lantern.

Halfway down the stairs Eustacie stopped. “I ought to have a pistol!”

“Good gracious sakes alive, miss!” whispered Lucy. “Whatever would you do with one of them nasty, dangerous things?”

“But, of course, I must have a pistol!” said Eustacie. “And I know where there is a pistol, too!” She turned, ignoring her abigail’s tearful protests, and ran lightly up the stairs again, and disappeared in the direction of the Long Gallery.

When she returned she was flushed and rather out of breath and carried in her right hand a peculiarly deadly-looking duelling pistol with a ten-inch barrel and silver sights. Lucy nearly dropped the bandboxes when she saw it, and implored her mistress in an agitated whisper to put it down.

“It is my cousin Ludovic’s,” said Eustacie triumphantly. “There were two of them in a case in the bedchamber that was his. How fortunate that I should have remembered! I saw them—oh, a long time ago!—when they put the new curtains in that room. Do you think it is loaded?”

“Oh, mercy, miss, I hope not!”

“I must be careful,” decided Eustacie, handling the weapon somewhat gingerly. “I think it has a hair-trigger, but I do not properly understand guns. Hurry, now!”

The snow had stopped falling some time before, but a light covering of it lay upon the ground, and there was a sharp, frosty nip in the air. The two females, one of them in high fettle and the other shivering with mingled cold and fright, trod softly down the drive that led from the house to the stables. No light showed in the coachman’s cottage, nor in the grooms’ quarters, and no one appeared to offer the least hindrance to Eustacie’s escape. She unlocked the door of the harness-room, pulled Lucy in after her, and setting the lantern down on the table, selected a bridle from the wall, and pointed out her saddle to the abigail. The next thing was to unlock the stable door, and to saddle and bridle Rufus, who seemed sleepy but not displeased to see his mistress. Lucy, dreading the consequences of this exploit, had begun to weep softly, but was told in a fierce whisper to saddle Rufus and to stop being a fool. She was an obedient girl, so she gulped down her tears, and heaved the saddle up on to Rufus’s back. The girths having been pulled tight, the headstall removed and the bridle put on, it only remained to attach the two bandboxes to the saddle. This called for a further search in the harness-room for a pair of suitable straps, and by the time these had been found and the bandboxes suspended from them, Eustacie had decided that the only possible way to carry a pistol was in a holster. A lady’s saddle not being equipped with this necessary adjunct, one had to be removed from a saddle of Sylvester’s, and buckled rather precariously on to the strap that held one of the bandboxes. It seemed to be far too large a holster for the slender pistol that was pushed into it, but that could not be helped. Eustacie remarked that it was fortunate there was snow upon the ground, since it would muffle the sound of Rufus’s hooves on the cobblestones, and led him out to the mounting-block. Once safely in the saddle, she reminded Lucy to lock all the doors again and to replace the keys, gave her her hand to kiss, and set off, not by way of the avenue leading to the closed lodge gates, but across the park to a farm track with an unguarded gate at the end of it which could be opened without dismounting.

This feat presently accomplished, Eustacie urged Rufus to a trot, and set off down the lane towards the rough road that ran north through Warninglid to join the turnpike road from London to Brighton at Hand Cross.

She knew the way well, but to one wholly unaccustomed to being abroad after nightfall, the countryside looked oddly unfamiliar in the moonlight. Everything was very silent, and the trees, grown suddenly to preposterous heights, cast black, distorted shadows that might, to those of nervous disposition, seem almost to hold a menace. Eustacie was glad to think that she was a de Vauban, and therefore afraid of nothing, and wondered why a stillness unbroken by so much as the crackle of a twig should, instead of convincing her that she was alone, have the quite opposite effect of making her imagine hidden dangers behind every bush or thicket. She was enjoying herself hugely, of course—that went without saying—but perhaps she would not be entirely sorry to reach Hand Cross and the protection of the mail coach. Moreover, the bandboxes bobbed up and down in a tiresome way, and one of them showed signs of working loose from its strap. She tried to rectify this, but only succeeded in making things worse.

The lane presently met the road to Hand Cross, and here the country began to be more thickly wooded, and consequently darker, for there were a good many pines and hollies which had not shed their foliage and so obscured the moonlight. It was very cold, and the carpet of snow made it sometimes difficult to keep to the road. Once Rufus stumbled almost into the ditch, and once some creature (only a fox, Eustacie assured herself) slipped across the road ahead of her. It began to seem a very long way to Hand Cross. A thorn bush beside the road cast a shadow that was unpleasantly like that of a misshapen man. Eustacie’s heart gave a sickening bump, and all at once she remembered the Headless Horseman and for one dreadful moment felt positive that he was close behind her. Every horrid story she had heard of St Leonard’s Forest now came unbidden to her mind, and she discovered that she could even recall with painful accuracy the details of A Discourse relating a strange and monstrous Serpent (or Dragon) lately discovered and yet living, which she had found in a musty old volume in Sylvester’s library.

Past Warninglid the country grew more open, but although it was a relief to get away from the trees Eustacie knew, because Sylvester had told her, that the Forest had once covered all this tract of ground, and she was therefore unable to place any reliance on the Headless Horseman keeping to the existing bounds. She began to

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