ached and
ghastly, and altogether hideous, that, even now, reminds its master of
a former favorite hunter that had come to a glorious but untimely end
upon the hunting-field. A stuffed setter, with very glassy eyes, sits
staring, in an unearthly fashion, in one corner. Upon a window-sill a
cat sits, blinking lazily at the merry spring sunshine outside.

"Are you really going back to town this evening, Horace?" asks the
owner of all these gems, in a somewhat gloomy fashion, bending over a
fishing line as he speaks.

"Yes. I feel I am bound to be back there again as soon as possible."

"Business?"

"Well, I can hardly say it is exactly press of business," says the
candid Horace; "but if a man wants to gain any, he must be on the
spot, I take it?"

"Quite so. Where have you been all the morning? Sleeping?"

"Nothing half so agreeable." By this time Horace is looking at him
curiously, and with a gleam in his eyes that is half amusement, half
contempt: Dorian, whose head is bent over his work, sees neither the
amusement nor the scorn. "I did not go to bed at all. I walked down
to to the farms to try to get some fresh air to carry back with me to
the stifling city."

"Ah! past the mill? I mean in that direction?--towards the upper
farms?"

"No; I went past Biddulph's," says Horace, easily, half closing his
eyes, and Dorian believes him. "It is lighter walking that way; not so
hilly. Did you put in a good time last night?"

"Rather so. I don't know when I enjoyed an affair of the kind so
much."

"Lucky you!" yawns Horace, languidly. "Of all abominations, surely
balls are the worst. One goes on when one ought to be turning in, and
one turns in when one ought to be going out. They upset one's whole
calculations. When I marry I shall make a point of forgetting that
such things be."

"And Clarissa?" asks Dorian, dryly; "I can't say about the dancing
part of it,--you may, I suppose, abjure that if you like,--but I think
you will see a ball or two more before you die. She likes that sort of
thing. By the by, how lovely she looked last night!"

"Very. She cut out all the other women, I thought; they looked right
down cheap beside her."

"She had it very much her own way," says Dorian; yet, even as he
speaks, there rises before him the vision of a little lithe figure
gowned in black and crowned with yellow hair, whose dark-blue eyes
look out at him with a smile and a touch of wistfulness that adds to
their beauty.