or the humbling of the strong, self-reliant nature had not
come yet, though it was very near. The wild bull never saw the net till
its meshes had trapped him fast.

The same morning Guy, who was lounging an hour away at the Bellasys',
mentioned to them what had occurred. If he had glanced at Flora's face
just then, he would have been puzzled to guess what there was in the
intelligence to turn her so deadly pale. It was only for an instant that
the accomplished actress forgot her part, and when he looked at her next
there was not a trace of emotion in her face.

"Have you filled up his place?" she asked, carelessly.

"I have ordered my landlord to provide me," replied Guy. "I shall find
some well-trained scoundrel on my return, I hope. I shall never get
another like Willis, though. It's just my luck. The great principle of
the gazelle runs through life: When they come to know you well, &c. What
made you ask? Surely you have no _protege_ to recommend?"

Flora laughed gayly as she answered in the negative, and so the subject
dropped; but all the afternoon she was pensive and absent, and flashes
of vexation gleamed every now and then fitfully in her stormy eyes.

CHAPTER XXVI.

"Let none think to fly the danger,
For, soon or late, Love is his own avenger."

Christmas-tide had come round again, and hall, manor-house, and castle
were filling fast. But the pheasants had a jubilee at Kerton, to the
great discouragement of Mallett, who "could not mind such another
breeding season." Foxes were strong and plentiful with the Belvoir and
the Pytchley; and, during two months of open weather, many a
straight-goer had died gallantly in the midst of the wide
pasture-grounds, testifying with his last breath to the generalship of
Goodall and Payne. But the best shot and the hardest rider in
Northamptonshire lingered on still in Paris, wasting his patrimony in
most riotous living, and trying his iron constitution presumptuously.

Lady Catharine sat alone in the gray old house, paler and more care-worn
than ever. I think she would have preferred the noisiest revel that ever
broke her slumbers in the old times to the dead silence that brooded
like a mist in the deserted rooms.

Guy had always been a bad correspondent, and now he hardly ever wrote to
her; but rumors of his wild life reached his mother often, though dimly
and vaguely. It was best so; what would that poor lady have felt if she
could have gu