Not so far ahead, however, that he could not observe every movement of her light, graceful figure as she swept down the King's Highway.

She was a perfect horsewoman, firm, jaunty, free.

Somehow he knew, without seeing, that a stray brown wisp of hair caressed her face with insistent adoration: he could see her hand go up from time to time to brush it back--just as if it were not a happy place for a wisp of hair.
Perhaps--he shivered with the thought of it--perhaps it even caressed her lips.

Ah, who would not be a wisp of brown hair! He galloped along beside the Baron, a prey to gloomy considerations.
What was the use?
He had no chance to win her.

That was for story-books and plays.