child, how you
must have suffered! I wonder you ever smiled again. How well she sings,
does she not? when she does not try to go too high."

"Don't be severe," Guy retorted; "you may have to sing yourself some
day. You prefer talking, though? Well, with a well-managed _contralto_,
it comes nearly to the same thing, and I suppose you consider the world
in general is not worthy of it?"

Almost imperceptibly, but very meaningly, her glance turned to where I
sat close beside her.

"How absurd! you know why I don't sing often. To-night it would be--too
cruel. (Flora's idea of modest merit was peculiar.) Now tell me, what
are you going to ride to-morrow? We shall all go and see them throw
off."

Without answering her question, he leaned over her, and said something
too low for me to hear, which made her color brighten.

From a distant corner two ancient virgins, long past "mark of mouth,"
surveyed the proceedings with faces like moulds of lemon-ice. Flora
glanced toward them this time, and said demurely, making a gesture of
crossing her arms a _a la Napoleon I._, "Take care; from the summit of
yonder sofa forty ages behold you."

The caution was a challenge; and so her hearer interpreted it as he sank
down beside her.

I seemed to be lapsing rapidly into the terrible _third_ that spoils
sport, so I left them; but not all the adjurations of Godfrey Parndon
invoking his favorite antagonist to the whist-table could draw Guy from
his post again that evening.

I know men who would have given five years of life for the whisper that
glided into his ear as he gave Miss Bellasys her candle on retiring, ten
for the Parthian glance that shot its arrow home.

CHAPTER IX.

"I know the purple vestment;
I know the crest of flame;
So ever _rides_ Mamilius,
Prince of the Latian name."

The next was a perfect hunting morning; a light breeze, steady from the
southwest, and not too much sun; the very day when a scent, in and out
of cover, would be a certainty, if there were any calculation on this
contingency. Let us do our sisters justice--there is _one_ thing in
nature more uncertain and capricious than the whims of womankind.

The hounds had come up with their usual train of officials, and of those
steady-going sportsmen who love the pack better than their own children,
and can call each individual in it by his name. Godfrey Parndon was
doing the civil to the "great men in Israel," his heavies