unty people, and was not sure how
she might be received;--and then how would it be with her if the fox
should at once start away across country, and she should lack either
the pluck or the power to follow? There was Sir Griffin to look after
Miss Roanoke, and Lord George to attend to Mrs. Carbuncle. At last an
idea so horrible struck her that she could not keep it down. "What
am I to do," she said, "if I find myself all alone in a field, and
everybody else gone away!"

"We won't treat you quite in that fashion," said Mrs. Carbuncle.

"The only possible way in which you can be alone in a field is that
you will have cut everybody else down," said Lord George.

"I suppose it will all come right," said Lizzie, plucking up her
courage, and telling herself that a woman can die but once.

Everything was right,--as it usually is. The horses were
there,--quite a throng of horses, as the two gentlemen had two each;
and there was, moreover, a mounted groom to look after the three
ladies. Lizzie had desired to have a groom to herself, but had been
told that the expenditure in horseflesh was more than the stable
could stand. "All I ever want of a man is to carry for me my flask,
and waterproof, and luncheon," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "I don't care if
I never see a groom, except for that."

"It's convenient to have a gate opened sometimes," said Lucinda,
slowly.

"Will no one but a groom do that for you?" asked Sir Griffin.

"Gentlemen can't open gates," said Lucinda. Now, as Sir Griffin
thought that he had opened many gates during the last season for Miss
Roanoke, he felt this to be hard.

But there were eight horses, and eight horses with three servants and
a carriage made quite a throng. Among the crowd of Ayrshire hunting
men,--a lord or two, a dozen lairds, two dozen farmers, and as many
men of business out of Ayr, Kilmarnock, and away from Glasgow,--it
was soon told that Lady Eustace and her party were among them. A good
deal had been already heard of Lizzie, and it was at least known of
her that she had, for her life, the Portray estate in her hands. So
there was an undercurrent of whispering, and that sort of commotion
which the appearance of new-comers does produce at a hunt-meet.
Lord George knew one or two men, who were surprised to find him in
Ayrshire, and Mrs. Carbuncle was soon quite at home with a young
nobleman whom she had met in the vale with the Baron. Sir Griffin did
not leave Lucinda's side, and for a whil