IN THE SHADOW
"There's a chap coming here to-morrow whom you will like, Ginny," said Giles. "A Dr. Leyden; he's a Dutch naturalist, an old acquaintance of pater's; awfully interesting … had no end of adventures all over the globe."
"Really?" said Virginia, brightening. "I'm glad. I like that sort. Is he old?"
"Pater's age; you must get some of his tales." He glanced at the clock, then rattled on about his horses.
"Finished?" he asked presently. "Come out and look at the gee-gee; bet you he chucks me off before I'm ten minutes older; Jennings says he's a rank one."
Virginia accompanied him to the stables.
They did not ride in the afternoon; Virginia, on reflection, feared that it might appear ungrateful to be absent when Dessalines called. It was about four o'clock that she looked out of the bay window where she was reading and saw a startling picture for that stately English frame.
Slowly advancing up the avenue, mounted upon a magnificent black horse, came Dessalines. The horse, an enormous animal, conspicuous for its full, arching neck and massive, foam-flecked chest, approached with springing steps, curbed to slowness by the powerful hand of the rider. The bulging, knotted muscles of the charger, aquiver beneath the smooth, glossy skin woven with the swelling veins of the thoroughbred, the wild, eager eye, everted crimson nostrils, all told of a spirit maddened by restraint. As Virginia watched, thrilled at the spectacle of the restrained power, the nervous tension contained in living bodies of such appalling energy, the animal
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