n admiration of her pluck, to see
her lift her horse at a staken-bound fence; but the Colonel never looked
round. Away they went--they disappeared over the brow of a hill. Blanche
shook her reins and struck her chestnut, and I sawed my hunter's mouth
mercilessly with the snaffle. No use--we were too late by three minutes.
Confound it! they had just killed their fox after twenty minutes' burst
over a stiff country, one of the fastest things I ever saw.

Cecil was pale with over-excitement, and upon my word she looked more
ready to cry than anything when the M. F. H. complimented her with his
genial smile, and his cordial "Well done, my dear. I never saw anybody
ride better. I used to think my little Blanche the best seat in the
country, but she must give place to you--eh, Syd?"

"Miss St. Aubyn does everything well that she attempts," answered the
Colonel, in his calm, courteous tone, looking, nevertheless, as stern as
if he had just slain his deadliest enemy, instead of having seen a fox
killed.

Cecil flushed scarlet, and Cos coming up at that moment, a sadly
bespattered object for such an Adonis to present, his coat possessing
more the appearance of a bricklayer's than any one else's, after its
bath of white mud, she turned to him, and began to laugh and talk with
rather wild gaiety. It so chanced that the fox was killed on Horace's
land, and we, being not more than a mile and a half off his house, the
gallant Cos immediately seized upon the idea of having the object of his
idolatry up there to luncheon; and his uncle, and Cecil, and Blanche
acquiescing in the arrangement, to his house we went, with such of the
field as had ridden up after the finish. Cos trotted forward with the
St. Aubyn to show us the way by a short cut through the park, and the
echoes of Cecil's laughter rang to Vivian in the rear discussing the run
with his father.

A very slap-up place was Cos's baronial hall, for the Cossettings had
combined blood and money far many generations; its style and
appointments were calculated to back him powerfully in the matrimonial
market, and that Cecil might have it all was fully apparent, as he
devoted himself to her at the luncheon, which made its appearance at a
minute's notice, as if Aladdin had called it up. Cecil seemed disposed
to have it too. A deep flush had come up in her cheeks; she smiled her
brightest smiles on Cos; she drank his Moet's, bending her graceful head
with a laughing pledge to her ho