. No one ever saw
the General on horseback again.

Under these sad circumstances (and my aunt being no horsewoman), I
had apparently no other choice than to give up riding also. But my
kind-hearted uncle was not the man to let me be sacrificed to his own
disappointment. His riding-groom had been one of his soldier-servants
in the cavalry regiment--a quaint sour tempered old man, not at all
the sort of person to attend on a young lady taking her riding-exercise
alone. "We must find a smart fellow who can be trusted," said the
General. "I shall inquire at the club."

For a week afterward, a succession of grooms, recommended by friends,
applied for the vacant place.

The General found insurmountable objections to all of them. "I'll tell
you what I have done," he announced one day, with the air of a man who
had hit on a grand discovery; "I have advertised in the papers."

Lady Claudia looked up from her embroidery with the placid smile that
was peculiar to her. "I don't quite like advertising for a servant," she
said. "You are at the mercy of a stranger; you don't know that you are
not engaging a drunkard or a thief."

"Or you may be deceived by a false character," I added on my side.
I seldom ventured, at domestic consultations, on giving my opinion
unasked--but the new groom represented a subject in which I felt a
strong personal interest. In a certain sense, he was to be _my_ groom.

"I'm much obliged to you both for warning me that I am so easy to
deceive," the General remarked satirically. "Unfortunately, the mischief
is done. Three men have answered my advertisement already. I expect them
here tomorrow to be examined for the place."

Lady Claudia looked up from her embroidery again. "Are you going to see
them yourself?" she asked softly. "I thought the steward--"

"I have hitherto considered myself a better judge of a groom than my
steward," the General interposed. "However, don't be alarmed; I won't
act on my own sole responsibility, after the hint you have given me. You
and Mina shall lend me your valuable assistance, and discover whether
they are thieves, drunkards, and what not, before I feel the smallest
suspicion of it, myself."

IV.

WE naturally supposed that the General was joking. No. This was one of
those rare occasions on which Lady Claudia's tact--infallible in matters
of importance--proved to be at fault in a trifle. My uncle's self-esteem
had been touched in a tender place; and he had resolv