Striking it again, he reared, but received a stinging cut over the ears that brought him down.

Then furiously he kicked and plunged, catching the whip all over his glossy body, till with a furious squeal he flung himself forward and galloped headlong away.
Olga stood on the drive and watched with lips slightly compressed.

She knew that as an exhibition of skilled horsemanship the spectacle she had just witnessed was faultless; but it gave her no pleasure, and there was no admiration in the eyes that followed the distant galloping figure with the merciless whip that continued active as long as she could see it.
As horse and rider passed from sight beyond a clump of trees, she remounted her bicycle, and rode slowly towards the house.
Old and grey and weather-stained, the walls of Brethaven Priory shone in the hot sunlight.

It had been built in Norman days a full mile and a half inland; but more than the mile had disappeared in the course of the crumbling centuries, and only a stretch of gleaming hillside now intervened between it and the sea.

The wash and roar of the Channel and the crying of gulls swept over the grass-clad space as though already claim had been laid to the old grey building that had weathered so many gales.