be
very fond of pheasant-shooting, and I believe, when the game is
plentiful and the thing well managed, that sport is fascinating
enough; but people don't travel night and day into such a country as
Wales, where there are no railroads, merely for the purpose of
standing in a ride and knocking over a certain quantity of half-tame
fowls. No, no; I ought to have seen it long ago. I had lost him now,
and _now_ I knew his value when it was too late. Too late!--the knell
that tolls over half the hopes and half the visions of life.

Too late!--the one bitter drop that poisons the whole cup of success.
Too late! The golden fruit has long hung temptingly just above your
grasp; you have laboured and striven and persevered, and you seize it
at last and press it to your thirsty lips. Dust and ashes are your
reward. The fruit is still the same, but it is too late: your desire
for it is gone, or your power of enjoying it has failed you at the
very moment of fruition; all that remains to you is the keen pang of
disappointment, or, worse still, the apathy of disgust. I might have
made John my slave a few weeks ago, and _now_--it was too provoking,
and for that Welsh girl too! How I hated everything Welsh! Not Ancient
Pistol, eating his enforced leek with its accompanying sauce, could
have entertained a greater aversion for the Principality than I did at
that moment.

Presently we were joined by Lady Scapegrace. She too had got something
pleasant to say to me.

"I told you so, Kate," she observed, taking my arm, and leading me
down one of those secluded walks--"I told you so all along. Your
friend Captain Lovell proposed to Miss Molasses yesterday. Don't blame
him too much, Kate; if he's not married within three weeks, he'll be
in the Bench. Never mind how I know, but I _do_ know. I think he has
behaved infamously to you, I confess; but take comfort, my dear--you
are not the first by a good many."

I put it to my impartial reader whether such a remark, though made
with the kindest intentions, was not enough to drive any woman mad
with spite. I broke away from Lady Scapegrace, and rushed back into
the house. We were to leave Scamperley that day by the afternoon
train. Gertrude was already packing my things; but I was obliged to go
to the drawing-room for some work I had left there, and in the
drawing-room I found a whole bevy of ladies assembled over their
different occupations.

Women never spare each other; and I had to go thr