st; she talked so fast, so gaily, such
repartee, such sarcasms, such jeux de mots, that it was well no women
were at table to sit in judgment on her afterwards. A deadly paleness
came over Vivian's face as he listened to her--but he sat at the bottom
of the board where Cecil could not see him. His father, the gayest and
best-tempered of mortals, laughed and applauded her; the other men were
charmed with a style and a wit so new to them; and Cos, of course, was
in the seventh heaven.

The horses were dead beat, and Cos's drag, with its four bays very
fresh, for they were so little worked, was ordered to take us back to
Deerhurst.

"Who'll drive," said Horace. "Will you, Syd?"

"No," said his cousin, more laconically than politely.

"Let _me_," cried Cecil. "I can drive four in hand. Nothing I like
better."

"Give me the ribbons," interposed the Colonel, changing his mind, "if
you can't drive them yourself, Cos, as you ought to do."

"No, no," murmured Cos. "Mith St. Aubyn shall do everything she wishes
in _my_ house."

"Let her drive them," laughed Vivian, senior. "Blanche has tooled my
drag often enough before now."

Before he had finished, Cecil had sprung up on to the box as lightly as
a bird; her cheeks were flushed deeper still, and her gazelle eyes
flashed darker than ever. Cos mounted beside her. Blanche and I in the
back seat. The M. F. H., Syd, and the two other men behind. The bays
shook their harness and started off at a rattling pace, Cecil tooling
them down the avenue with her little gauntleted hands as well as if she
had been Four-in-hand Forester of the Queen's Bays, or any other crack
whip. How she flirted, and jested, and laughed, and shook the ribbons
till the bays tore along the stony road in the dusky winter's
afternoon--even Blanche, though a game little lady herself, looked
anxious.

Cecil asked Horace for a cigar, and struck a fusee, and puffed away into
the frosty air like the wildest young Cantab at Trinity. It didn't make
her sick, for she and Blanche had had two Queens out of Vivian's case,
and smoked them to the last ash for fun only the day before; and she
drove us at a mad gallop into Deerhurst Park, past the dark trees and
the gleaming water and the trooping deer, and pulled up before the hall
door just as the moon came out on Christmas-eve.

We were all rather fast at Deerhurst, so Blanche got no scolding from
her mamma (who, like a sensible woman, never put into their heads t