II
I had gone far beyond that initial stage; I had had two smashes and a
broken rib which my aunt nursed with great energy, and was getting some
reputation in the aeronautic world when, suddenly, as though she had
never really left it, the Honourable Beatrice Normandy, dark-eyed, and
with the old disorderly wave of the hair from her brow, came back into
my life. She came riding down a grass path in the thickets below Lady
Grove, perched up on a huge black horse, and the old Earl of Carnaby
and Archie Garvell, her half-brother, were with her. My uncle had been
bothering me about the Crest Hill hot-water pipes, and we were returning
by a path transverse to theirs and came out upon them suddenly. Old
Carnaby was trespassing on our ground, and so he hailed us in a friendly
fashion and pulled up to talk to us.
I didn't note Beatrice at all at first. I was interested in Lord
Carnaby, that remarkable vestige of his own brilliant youth. I had heard
of him, but never seen him. For a man of sixty-five who had sinned all
the sins, so they said, and laid waste the most magnificent political
debut of any man of his generation, he seemed to me to be looking
remarkably fit and fresh.
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