o," said Duncan. "He was in my class at college. I didn't
recognize him, though."

"Do you always forget your friends so easily?" said Helen Osgood with an
ironical sparkle in her blue-black eyes.

"Sometimes I try to," Duncan answered.

"Are you always successful?" she asked.

"No, Helen," he whispered, "not always."

The trap had reached the stone gateway of the Osgood place. As they
turned in, a call was sounded on the horn to announce their coming to
the servants, and, after passing the lodge, they could see the low,
white country house, with rambling wings and numerous stables and
outhouses in the rear, standing on a rise of ground at the end of the
winding road. The place had been in the Osgood family for more than a
hundred years. The oak-covered grounds about the house, and the green,
rolling lawn in front, were typical of an English park; but the old
wooden, colonial house, with its rambling additions and green blinds,
its stately veranda and Doric columned portico, was American, of a type
fast disappearing before the modern house decorator with his tints and
_bibelots_.

The trap dashed up to the door, a knot of servants appeared, the grooms
placed the ladder against the steps, and the guests alighted and were
conducted to their apartments, where, for the next hour, the house party
was occupied in the task of dressing for dinner.

CHAPTER X.

"I WILL LAUGH, TOO."

Harry Osgood was a man whose life was devoted to sport, and as he had
inherited a large fortune, he was able to indulge his tastes to the
fullest extent. Some one of his friends had said facetiously, that he
was fond of horses, hounds, and his wife, in the order named, and no one
who knew him well would deny that more of his life was spent in his
stables and kennels than in his home. He had passed many years in
England, and most of his time there was spent in a hard riding country,
where everyone, including the parson, followed the hounds. To Osgood,
therefore, there was no sport like hunting, and no music like the
inspiriting cry of the pack. He had been brought up on the "pigskin" and
felt a supreme contempt for many of the men about New York who went in
for sport, not for the love of it, but as a pose which enabled them to
wear the pink and talk the slang of the shires. He had seen so many
chaps of that description come an ignominious "cropper" at the first
fence, that he paid little attention to the talk of the clubs, and never