tition of it. "I
wonder what that can have been?" said she. For fire-arms in July are
torpid mostly, and this was a gunshot somewhere.

"They are firing at the Butts at Stamford Norton, my lady," said
Lutwyche; who always knew things, sometimes rightly--sometimes wrongly.
This time, the latter.

"Then the wind must have gone round. Besides, it would come again.
Listen!" Thus her ladyship, and both listened. But nothing came again.

Lady Gwendolen was as beautiful as usual that evening, but contrary to
custom silent and _distraite_. She did not tell the story of the Man in
the Park and his dog. She kept it to herself. She was unresponsive to
the visible devotion of a Duke's eldest son, who came up to Lutwyche's
standard in all particulars. She did not even rise to the enthusiasm of
a very old family friend, the great surgeon Sir Coupland Merridew, about
the view from his window across the Park, although each had seen the
same sunset effect. She only said:--"Oh--have they put you in the
Traveller's Room, Sir Coupland? Yes--the view is very fine!" and became
absent again. She retired early, asking to be excused on the score of
fatigue; not, however, seriously resenting her mother's passing
reference to a nursery rhyme about Sleepy-head, whose friends kept late
hours, nor her "Why, child, you've had nothing to tire you!" She was
asleep in time to avoid the sound of a dog whining, wailing, protesting
vainly, with a great wrong on his soul, not to be told for want of
language.

She woke with a start very early, to identify this disturbance with
something she lost in a dream, past recovery, owing to this sudden
awakening. She had her hand on the bell-rope at her bed's head, and had
all but pulled it before she identified the blaze of light in her room
as the exordium of the new day. The joy of the swallows at the dawn was
musical in the ivy round her window, open through the warm night; and
the turtle-doves had much to say, and were saying it, in the world of
leafage out beyond. But there was no joy in the persistent voice of that
dog, and no surmise of its hearer explained it.

She found her feet, and shoes to put them in, before she was clear about
her own intentions; then in all haste got herself into as much clothing
as would cover the risks of meeting the few early risers possible at
such an hour--it could but be some chance groom or that young
gardener--and, opening her door with thief-like stealth, stole out
throu