were looking at the stile. A
path across a buttercup meadow was beyond it. They were damped to some
coolness by the sight.

'Upon my word, the trick seems neat!' said Cumnock staring at the
pastoral curtain.

'Whose trick?' he was asked sternly.

'Here or there 's not much matter; they 're off, unless they 're under a
hedge laughing.'

An ache of jealousy and spite was driven through the lover, who groaned,
and presently said--

'I ride on. That old woman can follow. I don't want to hear her
gibberish. We've lost the game--there 's no reckoning the luck. If
there's a chance, it's this way. It smells a trick. He and she--by all
the devils! It has been done in my family--might have been done again.
Tell the men on the plain they can drive home. There's a hundred-pound
weight on your tongue for silence.'

Cumnock cried: 'But we needn't be parting, Dolf! Stick together. Bad
luck's not repeated every day. Keep heart for the good.'

'My heart's shattered, Cumnock. I say it's impossible she can love a
husband twice her age, who treats her--you 've seen. Contempt of that
lady!

By heaven! once in my power, I swear she would have been sacred to me.
But she would have been compelled to face the public and take my hand.
I swear she would have been congratulated on the end of her sufferings.
Worship!--that's what I feel. No woman ever alive had eyes in her head
like that lady's. I repeat her name ten times every night before I go to
sleep. If I had her hand, no, not one kiss would I press on it without
her sanction. I could be in love with her cruelty, if only I had her
near me. I 've lost her--by the Lord, I 've lost her!'

'Pro tem.,' said the captain. 'A plate of red beef and a glass of port
wine alters the view. Too much in the breast, too little in the belly,
capsizes lovers. Old story. Horses that ought to be having a mash
between their ribs make riders despond. Say, shall we back to the town
behind us, or on? Back's the safest, if the chase is up.'

Morsfield declared himself incapable of turning and meeting that
chariot. He sighed heavily. Cumnock offered to cheer him with a song
of Captain Chanter's famous collection, if he liked; but Morsfield
gesticulated abhorrence, and set out at a trot. Song in defeat was a
hiss of derision to him.

He had failed. Having failed, he for the first time perceived the
wildness of a plot that had previously appeared to him as one of the
Yorkshire Morsfields' moves to win an