e daybreak; their protection was not needed;
we were as safe as in the Tower of London. The next morning, while I was
sleeping heavily, Ralph was in the saddle scouring the country, with
what success the next Assizes could tell.

I go there again this winter for the cock-shooting, but I don't much
think Kate will accompany me.

Now who says "a rubber?" Don't all speak at once.

CHAPTER XVIII.

"He has mounted her on a milk-white steed,
Himself on a dappled gray;
And a bugelet-horn hung down by his side
As lightly they rode away."

It is hard to describe the terrible _prestige_ which, after the event I
have been speaking of, attached itself to Ralph Mohun. As for attempting
a second attack on the fatal house, the peasantry would as soon have
thought of storming the bottomless pit. They did not even try a shot at
him from behind a wall; considering him perfectly invulnerable, they
deemed it a pity to waste good powder and lead that might be usefully
employed on an agent or process server. As his gaunt, erect figure went
by, the men shrunk out of his path, and the women called their children
in hastily, and shut their cabin doors; the very beggars, who are
tolerably unscrupulous, gave his gate a wide berth, crossing themselves,
with a muttered prayer, "God stand betwixt us and harm." If Ralph
perceived this, I think he rather liked it; at all events, he made no
attempt, either by softening his manner or by any act of benevolence, to
win the popular favor.

Before going to the Lodge I had heard from Livingstone. He said that his
cousin's affair with Charley was progressing satisfactorily (I knew what
that meant), and that he was going himself to sell out. I was not
surprised at this; for some time past even the light restraint of
service in the Household Brigade had begun to bore him. But the
intelligence conveyed in a brief note from him during my stay with Mohun
startled me very much. It announced, without any preface or explanation,
that he was engaged to Constance Brandon.

I had observed that lately he never mentioned or alluded to Miss
Bellasys, but he had been equally silent about his present betrothed. I
told my host of the news directly.

"I am very glad to hear it," he said. "I never heard any thing but good
of his _fiancee_. She is wonderfully beautiful, too, I believe, and her
blood is unexceptionable. And yet," he went on musingly, "I should
hardly have fancied that sh