ot making music or reading together, which they often
did, both in English and Italian, they spent their time in healthful
outdoor exercises, sometimes rowing in a little boat on the lake, but
more often riding or driving, occupations in which, because they were
entirely new to her, Filomena especially delighted. When she had become
a perfectly proficient rider, Filomena and her husband used often to go
hunting in the park, at that time very much more extensive than it is
now. They hunted not foxes nor hares, but rabbits, using a pack of
about thirty black and fawn-coloured pugs, a kind of dog which, when not
overfed, can course a rabbit as well as any of the smaller breeds. Four
dwarf grooms, dressed in scarlet liveries and mounted on white Exmoor
ponies, hunted the pack, while their master and mistress, in green
habits, followed either on the black Shetlands or on the piebald New
Forest ponies. A picture of the whole hunt--dogs, horses, grooms, and
masters--was painted by William Stubbs, whose work Sir Hercules admired
so much that he invited him, though a man of ordinary stature, to come
and stay at the mansion for the purpose of executing this picture.
Stubbs likewise painted a portrait of Sir Hercules and his lady driving
in their green enamelled calash drawn by four black Shetlands. Sir
Hercules wears a plum-coloured velvet coat and white breeches; Filomena
is dressed in flowered muslin and a very large hat with pink feathers.
The two figures in their gay carriage stand out sharply against a dark
background of trees; but to the left of the picture the trees fall away
and disappear, so that the four black ponies are seen against a pale and
strangely lurid sky that has the golden-brown colour of thunder-clouds
lighted up by the sun.

"In this way four years passed happily by. At the end of that time
Filomena found herself great with child. Sir Hercules was overjoyed.
'If God is good,' he wrote in his day-book, 'the name of Lapith will be
preserved and our rarer and more delicate race transmitted through the
generations until in the fullness of time the world shall recognise the
superiority of those beings whom now it uses to make mock of.' On his
wife's being brought to bed of a son he wrote a poem to the same effect.
The child was christened Ferdinando in memory of the builder of the
house.

"With the passage of the months a certain sense of disquiet began to
invade the minds of Sir Hercules and his lady. For the