e near enough to
overhear the following conversation, which any high-toned reader will
recognize as the common and natural expression of the higher classes.

"When Diana takes the field the chase is not wholly confined to objects
ferae naturae," said Guy, darting a significant glance at his
companion. Flora did not shrink either from the glance or the meaning
implied in the sarcasm.

"If I were looking for an Endymion, now--" she said archly, as she
playfully cantered over a few hounds and leaped a five-barred gate.

Guy whispered a few words, inaudible to the rest of the party, and,
curvetting slightly, cleverly cleared two of the huntsmen in a flying
leap, galloped up the front steps of the mansion, and dashing at full
speed through the hall leaped through the drawing-room window and
rejoined me, languidly, on the lawn.

"Be careful of Flora Billingsgate," he said to me, in low stern tones,
while his pitiless eye shot a baleful fire. "Gardez vous!"

"Gnothi seauton," I replied calmly, not wishing to appear to be behind
him in perception or verbal felicity.

Guy started off in high spirits. He was well carried. He and the
first whip, a ten-stone man, were head and head at the last fence,
while the hounds were rolling over their fox a hundred yards farther in
the open.

But an unexpected circumstance occurred. Coming back, his chestnut
mare refused a ten-foot wall. She reared and fell backward. Again he
led her up to it lightly; again she refused, falling heavily from the
coping. Guy started to his feet. The old pitiless fire shone in his
eyes; the old stern look settled around his mouth. Seizing the mare by
the tail and mane he threw her over the wall. She landed twenty feet on
the other side, erect and trembling. Lightly leaping the same obstacle
himself, he remounted her. She did not refuse the wall the next time.

CHAPTER IV.

"He holds him by his glittering eye."

Guy was in the North of Ireland, cock-shooting. So Ralph Mortmain told
me, and also that the match between Mary Brandagee and Guy had been
broken off by Flora Billingsgate. "I don't like those Billingsgates,"
said Ralph, "they're a bad stock. Her father, Smithfield de
Billingsgate, had an unpleasant way of turning up the knave from the
bottom of the pack. But nous verrons; let us go and see Guy."

The next morning we started for Fin-ma-Coul's Crossing. When I reached
the shooting-box, where Guy was entertaining a select c