ting to-morrow; there is nothing that I know of likely to keep
me at home."

She is true to her word. Next morning they find her ready equipped at a
very early hour, "Taut and trim," as Dicky tells her, "from her hat to
her boots."

"Do you know," he says, further, as though imparting to her some
information hitherto undiscovered, "joking _apart_, you will understand,
you are--_really_--quite a pretty young woman."

"Thank you, Dicky," says she, very meekly; and as a more substantial
mark of her gratitude for this gracious speech, she drops a fourth lump
of sugar into his coffee.

Shortly after this they start, Dulce still in the very gayest spirits,
with Roger on her right hand and Mark Gore on her left. But, as they
near the happy hunting-grounds, her brightness flags; she grows silent
and preoccupied, and each fresh hoof upon the road behind her makes her
betray a desire to hide herself behind somebody.

Of late, indeed, hunting has lost its charm for her, and the meets have
become a source of confusion and discomfort. Her zest for the chase has
sustained a severe check, so great that her favorite hounds have
solicited the usual biscuit from her hands in vain.

And all this is because the one thing dear to the soul of the gloomy
Stephen is the pursuit of the wily fox, and that therefore on the field
of battle it becomes inevitable that she must meet her whilom lover face
to face.

Looking round fearfully now, she sees him at a little distance, seated
on an irreproachable mount. His brows are knitted moodily, his very
attitude is repellant. He responds to the pleasant salutations showered
upon him from all quarters by a laconic "How d'ye do," or a still more
freezing nod. Even Sir Christopher's hearty "Good-morning, lad," has no
effect up on him.

"Something rotten in the state of Denmark, _there_," says the master,
Sir Guy Chetwoode, turning to Dorian Branscombe. "Surely, eh? Rather a
safe thing for that pretty girl of Blount's to have given him the go-by,
eh?"

"Wouldn't have him at any price if _I_ were a girl," says Branscombe. "I
don't like his eyes. Murderous sort of beggar."

"Faith, I don't know," says Geoffrey Rodney, who is riding by them, and
who is popularly supposed always to employ this expletive, because his
wife is Irish. "I rather like the fellow myself; so does Mona. It's
rough on him, you know, all the world knowing he has been jilted."

"I heard it was _he_ gave _her_ up," says Teddy