the moment her heels touched the ground he released her, took her mount's reins in his hand and walked on, the lady beside him, matching his stride effortlessly. "Will you win the Hunting, Miss Carmichael?" he asked in tones of utter indifference.

She pouted; she was young and very beautiful, and that curious impersonal quality of his piqued her. "I hope to win, but I can't be sure. Miss Hopeton and Mrs. Anthony King both compete. However, I shall win the Dressage, so if I don't win the Hunting I shan't repine."

She spoke with beautifully rounded vowels, and with the oddly stilted phraseology of a young lady so carefully reared and educated there was not a trace of warmth or idiom left to color her voice. As he spoke to her Father Ralph's own speech became more pear shaped, and quite lost its beguiling hint of Irishness; as if she brought back to him a time when he, too, had been like this. Meggie frowned, puzzled and affected by their light but guarded words, not knowing what the change in Father Ralph was, only knowing there was a change, and not one to her liking. She let go Frank's hand, and indeed it had become difficult for them to continue walking abreast. By the time they came to a wide puddle Frank had fallen behind them. 

Father Ralph's eyes danced as he surveyed the water, almost a shallow pond; he turned to the child whose hand he had kept in his firmly, and bent down to her with a special tenderness the lady could not mistake, for it had been entirely lacking in his civil exchanges with her. "I wear no cloak, darling Meggie, so I can't be your Sir Walter Raleigh. I'm sure you'll excuse me, my dear Miss Carmichael"-the reins were passed to the lady. I can't permit my favorite girl to muddy her shoes, now can I?" He picked Meggie up and tucked her easily against his hip, leaving Miss Carmichael to collect her heavy trailing skirts in one hand, the reins in her other, and splash her way across unaided. The sound of Frank's hoot of laugher just behind them didn't improve her temper; on the far side of the puddle she left them abruptly.

"I do believe she'd kill you if she could," Frank said as Father Ralph put Meggie down. He was fascinated by this encounter and by Father Ralph's deliberate cruelty. She had seemed to Frank so beautiful and so haughty that no man could gainsay her, even a priest, yet Father Ralph had wantonly set out to shatter her faith in herself, in that heady femininity she wielded like a weapon. As if the priest hated her and what she stood for, Frank thought, the world of women, an exquisite mystery ,he had never had the opportunity to plumb.