re; Cecil, the Seraph, and her
victorious ladyship alone coming in for the glories of the "finish."

"Never had a faster seventy minutes up-wind," said Lady Guenevere,
looking at the tiny jeweled watch, the size of a sixpence, that was
set in the handle of her whip, as the brush, with all the compliments
customary, was handed to her. She had won twenty before.

The park so unceremoniously entered belonged to a baronet, who, though
he hunted little himself, honored the sport and scorned a vulpecide, he
came out naturally and begged them to lunch. Lady Guenevere refused to
dismount, but consented to take a biscuit and a little Lafitte, while
clarets, liqueurs, and ales, with anything else they wanted, were
brought to her companions. The stragglers strayed in; the M. F. H. came
up just too late; the men, getting down, gathered about the Countess or
lounged on the gray stone steps of the Elizabethan house. The sun
shone brightly on the oriole casements, the antique gables, the twisted
chimneys, all covered with crimson parasites and trailing ivy; the
horses, the scarlet, the pack in the paddock adjacent, the shrubberies
of laurel and araucaria, the sun-tinted terraces, made a bright and
picturesque grouping. Bertie, with his hand on Vivandiere's pommel,
after taking a deep draught of sparkling Rhenish, looked on at it all
with a pleasant sigh of amusement.

"By Jove!" he murmured softly, with a contented smile about his lips,
"that was a ringing run!"

At that very moment, as the words were spoken, a groom approached him
hastily; his young brother, whom he had scarcely seen since the find,
had been thrown and taken home on a hurdle; the injuries were rumored to
be serious.

Bertie's smile faded, he looked very grave; world-spoiled as he
was, reckless in everything, and egotist though he had long been by
profession, he loved the lad.

When he entered the darkened room, with its faint chloroform odor, the
boy lay like one dead, his bright hair scattered on the pillow, his
chest bare, and his right arm broken and splintered. The deathlike coma
was but the result of the chloroform; but Cecil never stayed to ask or
remember that; he was by the couch in a single stride, and dropped down
by it, his head bent on his arms.

"It was my fault. I should have looked to him."

The words were very low; he hated that any should see he could still be
such a fool as to feel. A minute, and he conquered himself; he rose,
and with