They found Mr. Freyne, immersed in ill-humour, resting in the library with one foot in an old slipper.
With voluble anger he poured out his story--the horse tripping and falling quite suddenly and running away for a mile and more, and the mud, and his severe pain. Lancelot, pale and unsympathized with, was sitting in a corner without even a cushion for his foot.
"Someone whistled just as I fell," stormed Mr. Freyne, "but no one came to my assistance. Oh, doubtless some ruffian using the stables at Girtnamurragh and whistling warning."
"Horrid trick to play you!" said Stafford sympathetically.
At the word "trick" Dearest George looked thoughtful.
"It is just possible," he said, "but he only does that old trick for a signal. Gheena knows it. But she was at the school-house this afternoon."
Gheena and Mrs. Weston stood together in the doorway, talking earnestly.
"Why is he always upon those cliffs?" said Gheena. "Why always out alone?"
"These are things which make one thoughtful," said Violet. "But I can't believe in much real mischief down here. It's so out of the way."
The spring slipped on before Gheena went out again to the cliffs. She hurt her foot out hunting, knocking it against a gate, and was too lame to scramble over rough ground.
Psyche had learnt to sit on at her jumps now, but custom brought no abatement of her joy in the chase.
She still glowed and cried out, and still as a shadow followed the Master.
He got used to the little white face close behind him, to shining eyes filled with admiration.
"It's so wonderful! You just blew the horn and squiggled them along and they bow-wowed again," was one of Psyche's happy remarks.
Psyche replied unabashed that it was all the same noise, and glowed again.
She had learnt how to steady her horse at a fence, how to hold him together galloping.
"And I want to hunt ever and always," she said--"always. I'll never live in Kent again."
There had been unguarded moments when Darby, riding home with his never-weary follower, had even told her how he felt his crippling.
"I had dreamt," he said one evening, "of a different life, little sprite, of someone that I cared for being with me--through it."
Psyche knew--the white glow faded a little and her eyes darkened.