he had become her
cavalier and escort suddenly. The young squire was bewildered; but as he
was only one leg in love--if the sentiment may be thus spoken of
figuratively--his vanity in his present office kept him from remorse or
uneasiness.

He rode at an easy pace within sight of the home of his treasure, and his
back turned to it. Presently there rose a cry from below. Mr. George
looked about. The party of horsemen hallooed: Mr. George yoicked. Rose
set her horse to gallop up; Seymour Jocelyn cried 'fox,' and gave the
view; hearing which Mr. George shouted, and seemed inclined to surrender;
but the fun seized him, and, standing up in his stirrups, he gathered his
coat-tails in a bunch, and waggled them with a jolly laugh, which was
taken up below, and the clamp of hoofs resounded on the turf as Mr.
George led off, after once more, with a jocose twist in his seat, showing
them the brush mockingly. Away went fox, and a mad chase began. Seymour
acted as master of the hunt. Rose, Evan, Drummond, and Mrs. Evremonde and
Dorothy, skirted to the right, all laughing, and full of excitement.
Harry bellowed the direction from above. The ladies in the carriage, with
Lady Jocelyn and Andrew, watched them till they flowed one and all over
the shoulder of the down.

'And who may the poor hunted animal be?' inquired the Countess.

'George Uplift,' said Lady Jocelyn, pulling out her watch. 'I give him
twenty minutes.'

'Providence speed him!' breathed the Countess, with secret fervour.

'Oh, he hasn't a chance,' said Lady Jocelyn. 'The squire keeps wretched
beasts.'

'Is there not an attraction that will account for his hasty capture?'
said the Countess, looking tenderly at Miss Carrington, who sat a little
straighter, and the Countess, hating manifestations of stiff-backedness,
could not forbear adding: 'I am at war with my sympathies, which should
be with the poor brute flying from his persecutors.'

She was in a bitter state of trepidation, or she would have thought twice
before she touched a nerve of the enamoured lady, as she knew she did in
calling her swain a poor brute, and did again by pertinaciously pursuing:

'Does he then shun his captivity?'

'Touching a nerve' is one of those unforgivable small offences which, in
our civilized state, produce the social vendettas and dramas that, with
savage nations, spring from the spilling of blood. Instead of an eye for
an eye, a tooth for a tooth, we demand a nerve for a ner