And it struck Richard that
there was in her expression and bearing a transparent sincerity, and
that her eyes--now narrowed as she smiled--were not the clear, soft
brown they appeared at a distance to be, but an indefinable colour,
comparable only to the dim, yet clear, green gloom which haunts the
under-spaces of an ilex grove upon a summer day. He turned his head
rather sharply. He did not want to think about matters of that sort. He
was grateful to this young lady for the devoted care she had bestowed
on his mother--but, otherwise her presence was only a part of that
daily discipline which must be cheerfully undertaken in obedience to
the exigencies of his new and fair idea.

"Probably it is a deer that has broken out of Windsor Great Park and
traveled," he said. "They do that sometimes, you know."

But here small Dick Ormiston, whose spirits, lately pirouetting on
giddy heights of felicity, had suffered swift declension bootwards at
mention of his thrilling adventure in which, alas, he had neither lot
nor part, projected himself violently into the conversational arena.

"Mother," he piped, his words tumbling one over the other in his
eagerness--"Mother, I expect it's the same deer that grandpapa was
talking about when Lord Shotover came over to tea last Friday, and
wanted to know if Honoria wasn't back at Newlands again. And then he
and grandpapa yarned, don't you know. Because, Cousin Richard--it must
have been while you were away last year--the buckhounds met at Bagshot
and ran through Frimley and right across Spendle Flats----"

"No, they didn't, Cousin Richard," Godfrey interrupted. "They ran
through the bottom of Sandyfield Lower Wood."

"But they lost--any way they lost, Cousin Richard," the younger boy
cried.--"You weren't there, Godfrey, so you can't know what grandpapa
said. He said they lost somewhere just into Brockhurst, and he told
Lord Shotover how they beat up the country for nearly a week, and how
they never found it, and had to give it up as a bad job and go home
again. And--and--Lord Shotover said, rotten bad sport, stag-hunting,
unless you get it on Exmoor, where they're not carted and they don't
saw their antlers off. He said meets of the buckhounds ought to be
called Stockbroker's Parade, that was about all they amounted to. And
so, Cousin Richard, I think,--don't you, mother--that this must be that
same deer?"

Whereat the elder Dick's expression, which had grown somewhat dark at
the men