s Hunsden is
scarcely eighteen, but she has been over the world--from Quebec to
Gibraltar--from Halifax to Calcutta. Two years of her life she passed
at a New York boarding-school, of which city her mother was a native."

"Indeed!" Sir Everard said, just lifting his eyebrows. "And Miss
Hunsden rides well?"

"Like Di Vernon's self."

"Is your Miss Hunsden pretty? and shall we see her at the meet
to-morrow?"

"Yes to both questions; and more than at the meet, I fancy. She and
her thorough-bred, Whirlwind, will lead you all. Her scarlet habit and
'red roan steed' are as well known in the country as the duke's hounds,
and her bright eyes and dashing style have taken by storm the hearts of
half the fox-hunting squires of Devonshire."

She laughed a little maliciously. Truth to tell, not being quite sure
that her game was safely wired, and dreading this Amazonian Miss
Hunsden as a prospective rival, she was nothing loath to prejudice the
fastidious young baronet beforehand, even while seeming to praise her.

"I am surprised that you have not heard of her," she said. "Sir
Harcourt Helford and Mr. Cholmondeley actually fought a duel about her,
and it ended in her telling them to their faces they were a pair of
idiots, and flatly refusing both. 'The Hunsden' is the toast of the
country."

Sir Everard shuddered.

"From all such the gods deliver us! You honor Miss Hunsden with your
deepest interest, I think, Lady Louise?

"Yes, she is such an oddity. Her wandering life, I presume, accounts
for it; but she is altogether unlike any girl I ever know. I am
certain," with a little malicious glance, "she will be your style, Sir
Everard."

"And as I don't in the least know what my style is, perhaps you may be
right."

Lady Louise bit her lip--it was a rebuff, she fancied, for her
detraction. And then Lady Carteret gave that mysterious signal, and
the ladies rose and swept away in billows of silk to the drawing-room,
and the gentlemen had the talk to themselves "across the walnuts and
the wine."

To one gentleman present the interim before rejoining the ladies was
unmitigatedly dull, even though the talk ran on his favorite
topics---horse-flesh and hunting. He was in love, he thought
complacently, and Lady Louise's eyes had sparkled to-day and her smiles
had flashed their bewildering brightness upon him more radiantly than
ever before.

"How pleased my mother will be!" Sir Everard thought. "I will ask Lady