ot; Captain Stanistreet may drive you."

"We'll see about that," said Mrs. Nevill Tyson as she left the room.

She soon reappeared, enchantingly pretty again in her laces and furs.

It was a glorious morning, the first thin white frost after a long thaw.
The meet was in front of the Cross-Roads Inn, about a mile out of Drayton
Parva. It was neutral ground, where Farmer Ashby could hold his own with
Sir Peter any day, and speech was unfettered. Somebody remarked that Mrs.
Nevill Tyson looked uncommonly happy in the dog-cart; while Tyson spoke
to nobody and nobody spoke to him. Poor devil! he hadn't at all a pretty
look on that queer bleached face of his. And all the time he kept
twisting his horse's head round in a melancholy sort of way, and backing
into things and out of them, fit to make you swear.

She must have noticed something. They were trotting along, Stanistreet
driving, by a road that ran side by side with the fields scoured by the
hunt, and Tyson could always be seen going recklessly and alone. He could
ride, he could ride! His worst enemy never doubted that.

"It's very odd," said she, "but the people here don't seem to like Nevill
one bit. I suppose they've never seen anything quite like him before."

"I very much doubt if they have."

"_I_ think they're afraid of him. Mother is, I know; she blinks when she
talks to him."

"Does she blink when she talks to me?"

"Of course not--you're different."

"I am not her son-in-law, certainly."

"Do you know, though he's so much older than me--I simply shudder when
I think he's thirty-seven--and so awfully clever, and _so_ bad-tempered,
I'm not in the least afraid of him. And he really has a shocking bad
temper."

"I know it of old."

"So many nice people have bad tempers. I think it's the least horrid
fault you can have; because it comes on you when you're not thinking,
and it isn't your fault at all."

"No; it is generally some one else's."

"I don't think much of people's passions myself. He might have something
far worse than that."

"Most undoubtedly. He might have atrocious taste in dress, or a tendency
to drink."

"Don't be silly. Did you know him when he was young? I don't mean to say
he isn't young--thirty-seven's young enough for anybody--I mean when he
was young like me?"

"I can't say. I doubt if he was ever young--like you. But I knew him when
he was a boy."

"So you understand him?"

"Oh, pretty well. Not always, perhaps. He's