[The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini]@TWC D-Link bookThe Tavern Knight CHAPTER XII 2/11
But her father could no more than answer that he hoped it might be Kenneth. Then the horsemen passed from behind the screen of trees and came into the clearing before the terrace, and unto the waiting glances of Ashburn and his daughter was revealed a curiously bedraggled and ill-assorted pair.
The one riding slightly in advance looked like a Puritan of the meaner sort, in his battered steeple-hat and cloak of rusty black.
The other was closely wrapped in a red mantle, uptilted behind by a sword of prodigious length, and for all that his broad, grey hat was unadorned by any feather, it was set at a rakish, ruffling, damn-me angle that pronounced him no likely comrade for the piously clad youth beside him. But beneath that brave red cloak--alack!--as was presently seen when they dismounted, that gentleman was in a sorry plight.
He wore a leather jerkin, so cut and soiled that any groom might have disdained it; a pair of green breeches, frayed to their utmost; and coarse boots of untanned leather, adorned by rusty spurs. On the terrace Gregory paused a moment to call his groom to attend the new-comers, then he passed down the steps to greet Kenneth with boisterous effusion.
Behind him, slow and stately as a woman of twice her years, came Cynthia.
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