set down
his liege lady at her protegee's, he would drive straight back to
Piccadilly. But he had not noticed what he noted now, that instead of
one of his carriage-grays, who had fallen slightly lame, they had put
into harness the young one, Maraschino, who matched admirably for size
and color, but who, being really a hunter, though he had been broken to
shafts as well, was not the horse with which to risk driving a lady.

However, Beauty was a perfect whip and had the pair perfectly in hand,
so that he thought no more of the change, as the grays dashed at a
liberal half-speed through the park, with their harness flashing in the
moonlight, and their scarlet rosettes fluttering in the pleasant air.
The eyes beside him, the Titian-like mouth, the rich, delicate cheek,
these were, to be sure, rather against the coolness and science that
such a five-year-old as Maraschino required; they were distracting even
to Cecil, and he had not prudence enough to deny his sovereign lady when
she put her hands on the ribbons.

"The beauties! Give them to me, Bertie. Dangerous? How absurd you are;
as if I could not drive anything? Do you remember my four roans at
Longchamps?"

She could, indeed, with justice, pique herself on her skill; she
drove matchlessly, but as he resigned them to her, Maraschino and his
companion quickened their trot, and tossed their pretty thoroughbred
heads, conscious of a less powerful hand on the reins.

"I shall let their pace out; there is nobody to run over here," said her
ladyship.

Maraschino, as though hearing the flattering conjuration swung off into
a light, quick canter, and tossed his head again; he knew that, good
whip though she was, he could jerk his mouth free in a second, if he
wanted. Cecil laughed--prudence was at no time his virtue--and leaned
back contentedly, to be driven at a slashing pace through the balmy
summer's night, while the ring of the hoofs rang merrily on the turf,
and the boughs were tossed aside with a dewy fragrance. As they went,
the moonlight was shed about their path in the full of the young night,
and at the end of a vista of boughs, on a grassy knoll were some phantom
forms--the same graceful shapes that stand out against the purple
heather and the tawny gorse of Scottish moorlands, while the lean
rifle-tube creeps up by stealth. In the clear starlight there stood
the deer--a dozen of them, a clan of stags alone--with their antlers
clashing like a clash of swords