' And she left us.
"I was white and trembling with anger. He smiled coolly, and was careful
to choose me one of his best cigars, saying as he handed it:
'Conversation is a science, Marmion. Study it; there is solid
satisfaction in it; it is the only art that brings instant pleasure. Like
the stage, it gets its immediate applause.'
"Well, Mrs. Valiant did ride Carbine on that Saturday. Such a scene it
was! I see it now--the mottled plump of hounds upon the scent, the bright
sun showing up the scarlet coats of the whips gloriously, the long stride
of the hunters, ears back and quarters down! She rode Carbine, and the
fences WERE stiff--so stiff that I couldn't have taken half of them.
Afterward I was not sorry that I couldn't; for she rode for a fall that
day on Carbine, her own horse, she had bought him of Major Karney a few
days before,--and I heard her last words as she lay beside him, smiling
through the dreadful whiteness of her lips. 'Goodbye, Marmy,' she
whispered. 'Carbine and I go together. It is better so, in the full cry
and a big field. Tell the men at Luke's that I hope they will pass at the
coming exams.
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