ate to her,--as a lover might have been,--she
would have been troubled in spirit and heavy at heart. But now it
seemed as though all that love-making had been an episode which had
passed away, and that the old pleasant friendship still remained.
As yet, while they were standing there in the hall, there had come
no moment for her to feel whether there was anything to regret in
this. But certainly there had been comfort in it. She had been able
to appear before all her Stalham friends, in the presence even of
the man himself, without any of that consciousness which would have
oppressed her had he come there simply as her acknowledged lover, and
had she come there conscious before all the guests that it was so.

Then they sat for a while drinking tea and eating buttered toast in
the drawing-room. A supply of buttered toast fully to gratify the
wants of three or four men just home from hunting has never yet been
created by the resources of any establishment. But the greater marvel
is that the buttered toast has never the slightest effect on the
dinner which is to follow in an hour or two. During this period the
conversation turned chiefly upon hunting,--which is of all subjects
the most imperious. It never occurs to a hunting-man to suppose
that either a lady, or a bishop, or a political economist, can be
indifferent to hunting. There is something beyond millinery,--beyond
the interests of the church,--beyond the price of wheat,--in that
great question whether the hounds did or did not change their fox in
Gobblegoose Wood. On the present occasion Sir Harry was quite sure
that the hounds did carry their fox through Gobblegoose Wood, whereas
Captain Glomax, who had formerly been master of the pack which now
obeyed Sir Harry, was perfectly certain that they had got upon
another animal, who went away from Gobblegoose as fresh as paint. He
pretended even to ridicule Sir Harry for supposing that any fox could
have run at that pace up Buddlecombe Hill who had travelled all the
way from Stickborough Gorse. To this Sir Harry replied resentfully
that the Captain did not know what were the running powers of a
dog-fox in March. Then he told various stories of what had been done
in this way at this special period of the year. Glomax, however,
declared that he knew as much of a fox as any man in England, and
that he would eat both the foxes, and the wood, and Sir Harry, and,
finally, himself, if the animal which had run up Buddlecombe Hi