Bandit Love

Rotten Row on a brilliant June morning, and Hyde Park at its loveliest. The London “season” at its height, and throngs of fashionably dressed men and women “taking the air,” strolling idly to and fro, lounging on little green-painted chairs, or leaning on the rails watching the riders of all nationalities.

A sight is well worth watching. It is the week of the International Horse Show, and there are many foreign officers in gaily-colored uniforms, mounted on sleek and beautiful thoroughbreds, cantering along amidst a throng of more soberly clad riders of both sexes.

The “liver brigade” is at full strength. These red-faced, white-mustached, elderly men, with “Retired Colonel, Indian Army,” stamped all over them, as it were, are probably telling each other, as they try to urge their hacks to a gallop, that “the Row is becoming damnably overcrowded, sir, and the place is going to the dogs. Those confounded foreigner fellows look like circus performers, and that sort of young woman wouldn’t have been tolerated in my young days…. Gad! Just look at that girl!”

The girl in question is mounted on a high-spirited bay which is resenting her mastery and is fighting to get the bit between his teeth. The horse rears, jerking his fine head from side to side, then bucks with a whinny of rage, and the “liver brigade” scatters. A mounted policeman, on the alert to render assistance and prevent accidents, brings along his well-trained steed at a hand-gallop, recognizes the rider of the bucking thoroughbred, and reins up with a grin on his bronzed face.

He knows that Miss Myra Rostrevor, although she looks a mere slip of a girl, is quite capable of riding and handling almost any horse that ever was saddled, and is no more likely to be thrown than any of the Italian officers who have been competing for championships at the Olympia. He remembers, too, that when another woman’s horse bolted with her a few weeks previously, Miss Rostrevor easily outdistanced him in pursuit of the runaway, brought the startled animal to a standstill, and rode off without waiting for a word of thanks from the scared rider.

Idlers lining the rails, however, ignorant of the identity and capabilities of Miss Myra Rostrevor, watch her struggle with her spirited steed apprehensively if they are ignorant of horsemanship, and with admiration if they are experienced.