et habit of her ladyship, and the azure skirts of the
Zu-Zu foremost of all in the rush through the spinneys while Cecil
on the King, and the Seraph on a magnificent white weight-carrier, as
thoroughbred and colossal as himself, led the way with them. The scent
was hot as death in the spinneys, and the pack raced till nothing but
a good one could live with them; few but good ones, however, were to
be found with the Quorn, and the field held together superbly over the
first fence, and on across the grassland, the game old fox giving no
sign of going to covert, but running straight as a crow flies, while the
pace grew terrific.

"Beats cock-fighting!" cried the Zu-Zu, while her blue skirts fluttered
in the wind, as she lifted Cecil's brown mare, very cleverly, over
a bilberry hedge, and set her little white teeth with a will on the
Seraph's attar-of-rose cigarette. Lady Guenevere heard the words as
Vivandiere rose in the air with the light bound of a roe, and a slight
superb dash of scorn came into her haughty eyes for the moment; she
never seemed to know that "that person" in the azure habit even existed,
but the contempt awoke in her, and shone in her glance, while she rode
on as that fair leader of the Belvoir and Pytchley alone could ride over
the fallows.

The steam was on at full pressure, the hounds held close to his
brush,--heads up, sterns down,--running still straight as an arrow over
the open, past coppice and covert, through gorse and spinney, without a
sign of the fox making for shelter. Fence and double, hedge and brook,
soon scattered the field; straying off far and wide, and coming to grief
with lots of "downers," it grew select, and few but the crack men could
keep the hounds in view. "Catch 'em who can," was the one mot d'ordre,
for they were literally racing; the line-hunters never losing the scent
a second, as the fox, taking to dodging, made all the trouble he could
for them through the rides of the woods. Their working was magnificent,
and, heading him, they ran him round and round in a ring, viewed him for
a second, and drove him out of covert once more into the pastures, while
they laid on at a hotter scent and flew after him like staghounds.

Only half a dozen were up with them now; the pace was tremendous, though
all over grass; here a flight of posts and rails tried the muscle of
the boldest; there a bullfinch yawned behind the blackthorn; here a big
fence towered; there a brook rushed angrily