arrels of his rather ineffective gun, and Archie,
with three or four other men and two women, a wife and a sister, was
smoking with his back against a rock.

"Shall you be in to-morrow?" asked Dick casually.

Jenny paused an instant.

"I should think so!" she said. "I've got one or two things to do."

"Perhaps I may look in? I want to talk to you about something if I may."

"Shan't you be shooting again?"

"No; I'm not very fit and shall take a rest."

Jenny was silent.

"About what time?" pursued Dick.

Jenny roused herself with a little start. She had been staring out over
the hills and wondering if that was the church above Barham that she
could almost see against the horizon.

"Oh! any time up to lunch," she said vaguely.

Dick stood up slowly with a satisfied air and stretched himself. He
looked very complete and trim, thought Jenny, from his flat cap to his
beautifully-spatted shooting-boots. (It was twelve hundred a year, at
least, wasn't it?)

"Well, I suppose we shall be moving directly," he said.

* * * * *

A beater came up bringing the mare just before the start was made.

"All right, you can leave her," said Jenny. "I won't mount yet. Just
hitch the bridle on to something."

It was a pleasant and picturesque sight to see the beaters, like a file
of medieval huntsmen, dwindle down the hill in their green and silver in
one direction, and, five minutes later, the sportsmen in another. It
looked like some mysterious military maneuver on a small scale; and
again Jenny considered the illusion of free choice enjoyed by the
grouse, who, perhaps, two miles away, crouched in hollows among the
heather. And yet, practically speaking, there was hardly any choice at
all....

Lady Richard, the wife of one of the men, interrupted her in a drawl.

"Looks jolly, doesn't it?" she said.

Jenny assented cordially.

(She hated this woman, somehow, without knowing why. She said to herself
it was the drawl and the insolent cold eyes and the astonishing
complacency; and she only half acknowledged that it was the beautiful
lines of the dress and the figure and the assured social position.)

"We're driving," went on the tall girl. "You rode, didn't you?

"Yes."

"Lord Talgarth's mare, isn't it? I thought I recognized her."

"Yes. I haven't got a horse of my own, you know," said Jenny
deliberately.

"Oh!"

Jenny suddenly felt her hatred rise almost to passion.

"I must