Volume Ii Part 11 (2/2)

”Molly says they have just shot 'the Laurels' for the seventh time this year, and there's not a hen pheasant left on the estate.”

”Never mind, father, it won't matter to us. Mr Preece will have some more down from Leadenhall Market or some such place next year; and, after all, they pay our rent for us, and we couldn't live without them.”

”Pay the rent,” grumbled the squire; ”I could have done that myself, if I'd sold all the game, and never given a head to man or woman on the place.”

”Then why didn't you, Dad?”

”Why didn't I, girl? Well then, it's just because I suppose I've always belonged to 'the stupid party,' thank G.o.d for it.”

Poor old Lowry was a red-hot Tory, without any Liberal instincts whatever, a fact which sufficiently accounted for the mess he had made of his life. And yet, somehow, the men who dared still to touch their hats to this reprehensible old robber of the public lands, did so with a smile in their eyes more hearty than the smirk they gave to his successor, Mr Preece.

Since the first day we met her, a change has come over Kate. The grey-blue eyes are just as beautiful, but there is less sparkle in them; the lips are just as sweet, sweeter it may be, but the dimple has gone. In the last few months she has seen more of the seamy and shabby side of life than she had even guessed at in the twenty sunny years which went before.

I don't think the squire has any suspicion of it, and Kate has neither mother nor sister to tell it to, but her poor little heart has had its stoutness tried a good deal of late. When Kate was queen at the Hall, gallant George Vernon, somewhile captain of Hussars, and at present master of the hounds and Kate's very distant cousin, had remembered the tie of kins.h.i.+p to the bright young beauty quite as often as duty required. Now his visits were like angel's visits in number and, to the proud Kate, far less welcome.

George Vernon was no sn.o.b, but then Kate, the hostess at the Hall, the reigning queen in the hunting-field, and Kate without a horse to her name, in a cottage and out of the world altogether, were very different persons, and George unconsciously showed that he felt the change.

Though man is fickle, perhaps George would not have allowed his admiration for his cousin to cool so suddenly had there not been attractions elsewhere.

Miss Preece (the daughter of the new tenant at the Hall) would have pa.s.sed as a pretty woman anywhere. If lemon-coloured locks, an abundant fringe, bright colour, and the full, tempting figure of a young Juno, make beauty, then Polly Preece was a belle. If reckless riding and a smart habit make a horsewoman, Polly Preece was a very Amazon.

True she had never had a fall; true her horses cost three hundred guineas apiece, and were clever enough to jump through hoops at a circus, even though they had ten stone of fair humanity hung on to their tortured mouths; and true, too, that though Polly laughed often (and showed in doing so as dazzling a set of teeth as ever disappointed a dentist), few people owed even a smile to any wit of hers.

But the Bruisers (as the men of the Gonaway hounds were called) voted her a right good sort, if only she would give them a little more time at their fences and not always pick the tenderest part of a man to jump upon.

George Vernon did the civil at first as Master. In a week's time he was her pilot, and in a month half a dozen of the Bruisers were sadly afraid that he would ere long be her husband, thereby robbing them of the greatest prize in the local market of matrimony and of the merriest bachelor in the hunt. As for George himself, he thought honestly enough that the Preece girl was ”very good fun,” but if he could have had her dollars without her he would have been a happy man. Unfortunately, circ.u.mstances, especially the bills connected with the maintenance of a crack pack of fox-hounds, were beginning to impress upon him more and more the necessity for converting Miss Preece into a connecting link between himself and her papa's money bags.

This was, roughly, the state of affairs on Monday, November 2nd, 1885, the first regular meet of the Bruisers for the season.

It was a time-honoured custom that the first meet should be held at the Hall, and though the master of the house who had entertained them so often was there no longer, still the house stood and the custom remained.

”I suppose you would hardly care to go to the meet to-day, Dad?”

queried Kate at breakfast.

”Not go to the meet, girl, after keeping the old tryst so many years, why not?”

”Oh, I don't know, only I thought you might not.”

”What, because another fellow provides the sherry and is master at the Hall? Of course I don't like it, but providing he does not give the men Hamburg stuff, I'll go and be thankful to him for doing what I can no longer afford to do. Put on a leather petticoat, little woman, and we'll run with them since we can't ride.”

I think the old man struck the match to light his pipe a shade more viciously than was necessary, but he never winced, though he was perhaps remembering another 2nd of November when the little woman was yet unborn, and he himself on the best horse in the country was as good a man ”as ever holloaed to a hound,” and in one fair woman's eyes the best.

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