"If Jake or Dick had held her up, I could have understood," he said.
"It was Lance," Carrie insisted. "Why are you puzzled?"
"For one thing, I imagine he doesn't like me," Jim replied and indicated by a gesture the old house, and the sweep of smooth pasture and yellow stubble that rolled down the hill. "Perhaps it's not strange. I have taken all this from him!"
"That is so," Jim agreed. "Dick's different. He's careless; I don't think he feels things. However, I must thank Lance." He paused and resumed: "The boys were in the ditch and I was under the car. Who pulled me out?"
"I did," said Carrie, blushing. "There was nobody else."
Jim took her hand. "My dear! When I needed help before, you were about. But that ditch is four feet deep and I'm heavy."
Carrie pulled her hand from his and smiled. "You are heavy, Jim, and it was something of a strain. However, I'll come with you, if you are going down the hill."
"To take care of me?" said Jim, with a twinkle. "If you don't mind, I'd sooner go alone."
He got up, and seeing that his step was firm, she let him go. It was not a caprice that he would not take her, but when she returned to the house she sent Jake after him.
As he went down the hill Jim thought about Mordaunt. The man was something of a puzzle, and Jim admitted that he had, perhaps, not been just when he accounted for his antagonism. Lance, no doubt, felt that he ought to have got Langrigg, but he was not altogether moved by disappointed greed. Their antagonism went deeper than that. Lance was a conventionalist; he clung instinctively to traditions that were getting out of date. In fact, Jim thought he would have been a very fine country gentleman had he inherited Langrigg sixty years since. Lance was what horse-ranchers called a throw-back; in a sense, he belonged to an older generation.
There was another thing. Jim imagined Lance felt Evelyn's charm, and although they were cousins, he understood cousins sometimes married, with their relatives' approval, when the marriage would advance the interests of the family. It was possible that he might hurt Lance worse than by robbing him of Langrigg.
Yet Lance had held up the car for him and run some risk of being killed. After all, this did not clash with Jim's notion of his character. Lance might dislike the man he rescued, but he had the instincts of an English gentleman. Then Jim stopped and looked about, for he had reached the thorn hedge.
