{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_59370/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_59370","id":"gutenberg_59370","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59370","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Novels","Fox hunting -- Fiction","Horses -- Fiction","Ireland -- Fiction"],"text":"Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was\nproduced from images available at The Internet Archive)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n                            THE SILVER FOX\n\n\n\n\n                            THE SILVER FOX\n\n                                  BY\n\n                   MARTIN ROSS AND E. \u0152. SOMERVILLE\n\n          AUTHORS OF \u201cAN IRISH COUSIN,\u201d \u201cNABOTH\u2019S VINEYARD,\u201d\n                      \u201cTHE REAL CHARLOTTE,\u201d ETC.\n\n                       [Illustration: colophon]\n\n                                LONDON\n                       LAWRENCE AND BULLEN, LTD.\n               16 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.\n\n                                 1898\n\n\n\n\n                              SILVER FOX\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\n\nLady Susan had never been so hungry in her life. So, for the sixth time,\nshe declared between loud and unbridled yawns. She worked her chair\nacross the parquet towards the fire-place, dragging the hearthrug into\nfolds in her progress, and put her large and well-shod feet on the\nfender.\n\n\u201cWhat a beast of a fire! When you\u2019ve quite done with it, Bunny, I\nshouldn\u2019t mind seeing it just the same. You are a selfish thing!\u201d\n\nIn obedience to this rebuke Major Bunbury moved an inch or two to one\nside.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m not as selfish as you are,\u201d he said, with agreeable simplicity.\n\u201cMiss Morris can\u2019t see anything but your boots.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, she likes seeing boots,\u201d replied Lady Susan, establishing one on\nthe hob. \u201cThey don\u2019t have \u2019em in Ireland, do they, Slaney!\u201d\n\nIt was obviously the moment for Miss Morris to say something brilliant,\nbut she let the opportunity slip. Perhaps she was hampered by the\nconsciousness that her boots had been made in an Irish country town. She\ngot red. She did not know that it was becoming to her to get red.\nFinding no more appropriate retort, she laughed, and pushing back her\nchair, walked over to the window. What she looked out on was the lawn at\nHurlingham, covered smoothly and desolately with snow; a line of\nhuddled, white hummocks of ice, moving very slowly across the middle\ndistance, represented the River Thames; down to the right, five or six\nskaters glided on the black and serpentine curves of a little lake--they\nlooked like marionettes sliding along a wire. Even at that distance\nthey seemed to Slaney over-dressed and artificial. No doubt they were\nscreaming inanities to each other, as were these other English idiots in\nthe room behind her. How ineffably stupid they were, and how shy and\nprovincial they made her feel! How could Hugh have married into such a\npack?\n\nOne of the double doors at the end of the room opened, and a small, dark\nman appeared.\n\n\u201cAwfully sorry to have kept you all waiting,\u201d he said abjectly. \u201cI\u2019m\nafraid it\u2019s a bad business; they say that there\u2019s nothing to be had here\non Sundays at this time of year, unless it\u2019s ordered beforehand.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh Lord!\u201d ejaculated Lady Susan, bringing her foot and the shovel down\nwith a crash. \u201cDo you mean to say there\u2019s nothing to eat?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s not quite as bad as that, but precious nearly,\u201d he replied,\nlooking at her so deplorably that Slaney felt inclined to laugh. \u201cWe\u2019re\ngoing to have some of the waiter\u2019s dinner. It\u2019s a leg of mutton, and he\nsays he don\u2019t think it\u2019s quite boiled yet, but I said we wouldn\u2019t wait.\u201d\n\nLady Susan seized Major Bunbury\u2019s hand, and pulled herself out of her\nchair. She was stalwart and tall, and her dress fitted beautifully. With\na whisk and rustle of silk petticoats she was across the room and caught\nMiss Morris by the arm.\n\n\u201cWorry, worry, worry! Sess, sess, sess!\u201d she said, with a sufficiently\nfortunate imitation of her father\u2019s kennel huntsman. \u201cCome on and eat\nraw leg of mutton! I _hope_ the waiter likes onion sauce!\u201d\n\nIn the dining-room a genial fire was blazing; a soft and rich-coloured\ncarpet glowed on the floor; the atmosphere was of old-fashioned comfort;\nthere was a desirable smell of fried potatoes. The party sank into their\nplaces at an oval table, and to each was administered a plateful of pink\nmutton that grew rosier at every slice. Captain Hugh French, late of\nthe ----th Hussars, looked round upon his guests, and felt that\nchampagne was the only reparation in his power.\n\n\u201cI feel it\u2019s all my fault bringing you people down here to starve.\nYou\u2019ll have to take it out in drink,\u201d he said helplessly.\n\nThe words were addressed to the company, but his brown eyes, that were\nlike the eyes of a good small dog, addressed themselves to those of his\nwife. Slaney, following them, wondered whether he could help seeing the\nblack line frankly drawn along the edge of Lady Susan\u2019s lower eyelids.\nThe white glare from the snow showed it unsparingly, as she looked at\nher husband over the rim of the champagne glass from which she was\ndrinking.\n\n\u201cYes, darling, you\u2019re a silly little thing,\u201d she said blandly; \u201cI always\nsaid that spill had given you softening of the brain.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat spill?\u201d asked Slaney. It was almost the first time she had spoken.\nShe had sat, inwardly scornful and outwardly shy, in the midst of\nconversation whose knack she could not catch, and whose purport she\nthought either babyish or vulgar. There must be an English and an Irish\nform of humour, so at least it seemed to Slaney, as she listened with\nthe intolerance of the clever provincial to Lady Susan\u2019s loud and ready\nlaugh. Hugh, at all events, was not, she thanked Heaven, humorous in\neither manner. She found herself less of a fool when she was talking to\nHugh.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m afraid you don\u2019t take much interest in your cousin\u2019s misfortunes,\nSlaney,\u201d he said. \u201cDidn\u2019t you know that I was smashed up at Bungalore\nlast spring, playing polo? I was trying to \u2018ride off\u2019 this great brute,\u201d\nindicating Major Bunbury, \u201cand I got the worst of it. I was in hospital\nfor a month, and grew a thundering big black beard. Couldn\u2019t shave for\nsix weeks.\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t make me sick,\u201d said Lady Susan, beginning heartily on biscuits\nand cheese. \u201cIf I\u2019d known that in time I wouldn\u2019t have married you. A\nlittle man with a beard\u2019s like a cob with a long tail. Couldn\u2019t do with\nyou if you\u2019d a long tail, Hughie.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m goin\u2019 to grow another when we get down to French\u2019s Court,\u201d retorted\nHughie. \u201cI shan\u2019t have anything else to do there. What on earth do you\ndo with yourself at Letter Kyle, Slaney?\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you grow a beard, Slaney?\u201d shouted Lady Susan, with her mouth full\nof biscuit. \u201cIf _I\u2019m_ bored over there I shall just dye my hair again.\nHow do you like it now, Bunny? I got it done in Paris on our way\nthrough. I think it might be a bit redder.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, it\u2019s as red as a fox now,\u201d said Major Bunbury, regarding it\ncritically.\n\n\u201cTalking of foxes,\u201d put in Slaney, endeavouring to be genial, \u201cthey all\nexpect Hugh to start the hounds again when he comes over. That will give\nyou something to do, Hugh.\u201d\n\n\u201cTally ho!\u201d uttered Major Bunbury, with a subdued whoop. \u201cThat\u2019s a\nrippin\u2019 good notion. I\u2019ll come over and whip for you, Hughie.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, you won\u2019t!\u201d cried Lady Susan. \u201cI\u2019ll whip for him myself; but I\ndon\u2019t believe he knows anything about it--does he, Bunny?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh dear, no!\u201d replied Major Bunbury, with elephantine sarcasm; \u201che\u2019s a\nperfect owl. Can\u2019t think why we made him carry the horn till he left the\nregiment--and the funny thing was that he seemed quite up to the job.\u201d\n\nCaptain French took no notice of the compliment.\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t imagine who the people are who want me to get up a pack there,\u201d\nhe said, without much enthusiasm; \u201clast time I was over there seemed to\nbe no one in the place but the parson and the two old Miss Macarthys.\nThey\u2019d make a pretty sort of a hunt.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, there are a lot of farmers,\u201d replied Slaney, \u201cand there\u2019s the\npolice officer, and there\u2019s Mr. Glasgow, the contractor of the new\nrailway.\u201d To her own surprise and annoyance she blushed as she spoke,\nand Major Bunbury, glancing incidentally at her, thought her almost\nhandsome.\n\n\u201cGlasgow,\u201d repeated Hugh; \u201cthere was a chap called Glasgow at Eton with\nme. What sort of age is this man?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, he\u2019s young--at least, not very young--I mean he\u2019s not exactly old;\nbut he\u2019s older than you are, Hugh,\u201d replied Slaney, with incoherence\nprobably due to the blush; \u201chis name is Wilfrid,\u201d she added. \u201cI think he\ndid say something about having been at school with you.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s the man. Clever sort of chap; fancies himself a bit. I remember\none of my pals was a fag of his, and said he was awfully particular\nabout his toast. He wants hounds, does he? Why don\u2019t he get them up for\nhimself?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s too busy; besides, he said you were the man to do it, Hugh. He\nsaid he had always heard you were a great rider, and knew all about your\nhaving won the Gold Cup at Punchestown.\u201d She was conscious of pleasure\nin the expounding of Mr. Glasgow.\n\nLady Susan, on the contrary, began to find it a bore.\n\n\u201cOh, look here, you people,\u201d she broke in, \u201cwe can\u2019t sit here all day to\nlisten to Hughie being made more conceited than he is. Come out and\nskate.\u201d\n\nShe snatched Major Bunbury\u2019s plate from before him, and put it down in\nfront of an expectant cat, flung a dinner napkin over her husband\u2019s\nhead, and fell to arranging her fringe and veil at a looking-glass with\nminute care and entire disregard of the company.\n\nAs Miss Morris walked after her cousin\u2019s wife down the snowy path to the\nlake, she framed with a confident touch the description that she would\ngive of her to Mr. Glasgow. Scarcely less confidently, and with a\ncomfortable sense of fore-knowledge of his ideas and point of view, she\nformulated the phrase in which he would give his opinion of Lady Susan.\nIt was satisfactory to reflect that, though she was a failure in Lady\nSusan\u2019s set, she found no difficulty in talking to intellectual people\nlike Mr. Wilfred Glasgow.\n\nA light and stinging wind blew along the ice, powdering the surface with\ninfinitely delicate particles of snow. The graceful lawns and slopes of\nHurlingham stared in blank whiteness, the evergreens stood out\nunnaturally dark and trim in the colourless monotony; beyond the scrape\nand hiss of the skates the silence was extraordinary. Slaney did not\nenjoy herself. The south-west of Ireland is not the climate in which to\nlearn skating; she toiled up against the wind with aching ankles, she\ndrifted back in front of it, and finally, in bitter resentment of her\nungainly helplessness, achieved the haven of a chair. Lady Susan swung\nand circled, and knew that her colour was rising in a manner more\nbecoming than the best rouge that money could buy; Major Bunbury swung\nassiduously after her. Hugh was cutting intricate figures far away.\nSlaney began thinking of the gaunt afternoon service in progress at that\nmoment in the church of Letter Kyle. There would be no music because\nshe was not there to play the harmonium; Uncle Charles would be longer\nand louder than ever over the responses to the Psalms now that her\nreproving eye was off him; Mr. Glasgow----no, she felt tolerably sure\nthat the Sundays of her absence would not be the ones selected by Mr.\nGlasgow for walking over to afternoon service at Letter Kyle.\n\n\u201cCome along, Slaney,\u201d said Captain French, sailing down upon her with\nhis hands extended, \u201cI know it\u2019s poor fun for you, but you must keep at\nit.\u201d\n\nThey moved off together, and Slaney felt, as she often did, a glow of\nappreciation of Hugh\u2019s desire to make things pleasant for others. She\ndid not notice character very much, except at the moments when it was in\ncontact with herself. Between the manifestations of her cousin\u2019s\namiability towards her she habitually thought of him as merely\nunintellectual. At this stage of Slaney\u2019s history intellectual people\nwere to her as irrevocably severed from the others as were the sheep\nfrom the goats.\n\n\u201cTell me more about this idea of the hounds,\u201d said Hugh, dodging behind\nthe island to avoid the raking sweep of Lady Susan\u2019s advance. \u201cWhat am I\nto hunt? Hares or foxes or a red herring?\u201d\n\n\u201cFoxes, of course,\u201d replied Slaney; \u201cthere are any amount of them. Uncle\nCharles shot two in our wood this autumn.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood Lord!\u201d ejaculated Hugh; \u201cwhere does he expect to go when he dies?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere do you think?\u201d answered Slaney, with an effort to be suitably\nflippant; \u201cif there\u2019s anything in the world that Uncle Charles is more\nconvinced of than another it is that he always has moved in the highest\ncircles, and that he always will.\u201d\n\nHugh laughed in his kindly, indiscriminating way.\n\n\u201cBy the way,\u201d went on Slaney, following up a connection of ideas,\n\u201cthere\u2019s a curious story in the country now about a fox. Mr. Glasgow\nwanted gravel for the new railway, and bought a bit of a hillside from\nold Danny Quin at Cahirdreen. There was a big patch of furze there, and\nthe men said that when the first blast went off a grey fox ran out of it\nand away into the hills; a sort of fox that no one had ever seen before.\nThey say that there is an old prophecy about the bad luck that is to\ncome when that hill is thrown into Tully Lake, and that is just what is\nto be done where the line crosses a corner of the lake. They believe\nthat the fox is a witch or a fairy, and that it will bring the bad\nluck.\u201d\n\n\u201cBy Jove! that\u2019s rather interesting,\u201d said Hugh, steering Slaney into a\nchair and subsiding into another beside her; \u201cwe\u2019ll have to kill that\ngrey fox.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe men say he was more a silver colour,\u201d pursued Slaney, \u201cand Mike\nDriscoll told me \u2018he thought he\u2019d never ate another bit, afther he seen\nthe way it legged it up the hill, an\u2019 it lashin\u2019 the tail and makin\u2019\nsnouts at them like a thing that\u2019d be grinnin\u2019 and laughin\u2019.\u201d Slaney was\nvery successful in her rendering of Mike Driscoll, and Hugh laughed\nagain, his ugly little falsetto laugh, and felt that Slaney was a very\ngood fellow indeed.\n\nLady Susan, doing \u201cDutch roll,\u201d bore down upon them.\n\n\u201cThe horrid thing was lying on my feet,\u201d she was exclaiming to Major\nBunbury, whose hand she was holding at the full stretch of both their\narms. \u201cI never remembered that till this instant,--Hughie,\u201d she called\nto Captain French as they passed, and grasping at his chair she whirled\nround and came sitting on his knee--\u201cIt really was a most awful dream,\ndarling. I had it last night when you were snoring, and it suddenly came\ninto my head now. I thought some ghastly thing was sitting on my feet,\nlike a dog or something, and then suddenly it turned into a whitey,\nsilvery sort of thing, a kind of Arctic fox, and the horrid thing was\nsmiling and showing all its teeth. My word, I _was_ in a funk. And then\nit turned out to be only the hot-water bag.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s all tricks, Slaney,\u201d said Hugh, \u201cshe heard what we were saying.\u201d\nHe laughed and looked at Slaney, whose curious hazel-green eyes were\nfixed in consternation on Lady Susan.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\n\nDanny Quin was to be buried that afternoon. It was the third day of the\nwake, and his house, always dependent for light on its open door, was\ndark with the crowd of people inside and outside the threshold. In the\ncorner of the kitchen, behind the brute obstruction of human beings,\nawkward and inert with stale drink, half-a-dozen candles made a garish\nnight-time round the dead man. He lay with the yellow flicker on his\nsteadfast face, a presence of extraordinary refinement and soulful\ntrance among his late fellows. He was an old man, in his lifetime a\ndriver of hard bargains, a teller of old tales in which his own\nsagacity, uprightness, and power of repartee were unflinchingly set\nforth. Here his super-natural pallor and tranquil lips spoke of death\nand resurrection to an audience whose greatest care was to accept in a\nseemly and gloomy manner as many glasses of whisky as were offered to\nthem.\n\nHis wife\u2019s eyes were hollow and glazed from want of sleep; she stood in\nher Sunday gown and white cap, receiving condolences without a tear, and\nwith the invariable reply, \u201cSure it couldn\u2019t be helped.\u201d\n\nShe hardly knew whether it were night or day, or how often the evening\nlight in the doorway had turned to blackness, and the blackness\nquickened to cold blue-grey dawn since they had pulled the feather-bed\nfrom under her husband in order that he might, in accordance with\nancient custom, breathe his last on the mattress. Her two married\ndaughters dispensed the whisky and the punch at a table near the door;\nin the bed-room behind the kitchen the more honourable visitors sat with\ntheir hats on, and became sapiently and solemnly tipsy. The room was\nset out for company; a brand new counterpane covered the mountainous\nbed, a naked mahogany table stood in the centre, bearing a black bottle,\na loaf of bread, and a two-pound lump of butter on a plate. A dazzling\nthree-and-sixpenny hearthrug was placed on the earthen floor in front of\na fire-place without a grate.\n\n\u201cI had not the pleasure of the--the--the dead gentleman\u2019s acquaintance,\u201d\nsaid one of the visitors, a stout and greasy public-house keeper, who\nhad driven over to the entertainment with a mutual friend, from a town\ntwelve miles away. \u201cBut I undherstand he was greatly respected in this\nneighbourhood, and all his family the same.\u201d\n\nThe eyes of the speaker were of a moist redness befitting the occasion;\nhis voice had a husky roll in it, and the raw and tepid reek of bad\nwhisky accompanied the eulogy.\n\n\u201cAs for respect,\u201d rejoined the mutual friend, addressing the hearthrug\nwith slow determination, \u201che had it, the Lord have mercy on him, and\nmore than he\u2019d ax of it. Ye needn\u2019t be talking of respect.\u201d\n\nSeveral of the party remarked, \u201cthat\u2019s thrue,\u201d and the publican felt\nthat he had said the right thing. Danny Quin\u2019s son here rose and went\nround the circle with the bottle. The attention was accepted with\nprotests, or with groans that betokened indifference to all earthly\naffairs. Young Quin sat down again. He was not drunk, but he had been\ndrinking and crying on and off for three days and nights, and his big\nlimbs felt tremulous and his brain hot.\n\n\u201cA nice, dacent little man as ever was in the barony,\u201d said an old woman\nglibly; \u201cthe Lord have mercy on him, \u2019tis he got the death very\nsudden\u201d--she crossed herself--\u201cand very quare, the Lord save us.\u201d\n\n\u201cI undherstand,\u201d said the publican, conscious of leading the\nconversation with ability, \u201cthat he sustained fatal injuries from a\nfall.\u201d\n\n\u201cArrah, what fatal injuries!\u201d returned the old woman with scorn; \u201cno,\nbut to break his neck was what he done. Didn\u2019t he walk out over the\nbrink o\u2019 the big sandpit in Cashel the same as one that wouldn\u2019t have\nthe sighth, an\u2019 he a fine soople man no more than seventy years? \u2019Twas\nlike a reelin\u2019 in the head the crayture got.\u201d\n\nThe tone was that of cautious supposition, and it was easy to discern\nthe desire of contradiction.\n\n\u201c\u2019Twas no reeling,\u201d said Tom Quin, suddenly addressing the company in a\nloud voice. \u201cI know well what was on him, and so do thim that was\nlookin\u2019 at him. \u2019Twas a start he took, the same as if he seen somethin\u2019\nfollowin\u2019 him. And I hope in God I\u2019ll be dead to-morrow if it isn\u2019t\nthrue what I\u2019m sayin\u2019, that if he didn\u2019t put his hand to the\nPark-na-Moddhera to sell it he\u2019d be dhrinkin\u2019 his glass in the fair of\nLetter Kyle this day.\u201d\n\nHis auditors exclaimed, groaned, and crossed themselves. All present,\nexcept the publican, knew every detail connected with Danny Quin\u2019s\ndeath, but they knew even better what was due to the dramatic moments\nin a story.\n\nThere was a stir in the kitchen outside, and Quin\u2019s youngest daughter\npushed her way into the room, crying and clapping her hands.\n\n\u201cThe priest is come--they\u2019re closin\u2019 the coffin on him--oh, dada, dada!\u201d\nshe wailed, and flung herself half-across the table without an effort at\nself-control.\n\nThe women proffered consolation, and raised her red head from where it\nlay beside the butter. Swaying and lolling, she was propped against\ntheir shoulders, with the light full on her convulsed face, and the\nwhole party crushed forth into the kitchen. There was some delay, while\na plate, with a heap of silver upon it, was taken from a table outside\nthe door of the house and handed over to the priest, and many faces\npeered in a circle round the counting of the money. There was more than\neight pounds, subscribed in silver and two half-sovereigns by the\nvisitors to the funeral, as payment to the priest for masses for the\nsoul of the deceased. It is an institution known as \u201cthe altar,\u201d and\nhappily combines a politeness to the dead man and his family, with a\nkeen sense of the return that will be made in kind when it becomes the\ndonor\u2019s turn to have a funeral. The sight of the gold was balm to the\ndazed spirit of the Widow Quin.\n\n\u201cThank God, they showed that much respect for him,\u201d she said, as\ncongratulations were passed round. \u201c\u2019Twas a great althar.\u201d\n\nA windy sunset of January was set forth that afternoon in cold orange\nand green behind the bogs near Tully Lake. The new railway line ran\nacross them, away in the north-west, and the rails gleamed along a track\nthat seemed to end against the breast of the evening sky. Coming from\nthe east, the line emerged from a cutting in a wooded hill, where blocks\nof stone, overturned trucks, and stumps of trees with twisted, agonized\nroots, littered the yellow sand. The wood ran to the lips of the cutting\non either side, and the strong fir-trees on the height could look down\nthe tawny slants upon their fallen comrades.\n\nStanding below, the jaws of the ugly cleft let in the winter sunset and\nthe twin glitter of the rails, while above, the fir-trees strove against\nthe evening wind. It was worth remaining still to look at, in spite of\nthe cold, and Mr. Wilfrid Glasgow, with two long account-books under his\narm, and the peak of his cap over his eyes, stood for at least a minute\nsurveying alternately his own handiwork and that of his Creator. He felt\na proper admiration for both; impartially he perhaps thought that his\nown was more deserving of credit. At length, turning his back upon the\nsunset, he walked along the line to where a road crossed it. As he\nclimbed some bars and swung himself down into the road it could be seen\nthat he was active, with the skilled and wary activity of forty. He was\ntall and slight; when his hat was on, his fair thin moustache and light\nfigure made short-sighted people place him in the early thirties.\n\nVoices and footsteps were on the road, and groups of people straggled\ntowards him in the twilight. They were the remnant of Danny Quin\u2019s\nfuneral _cort\u00e9ge_, and even at a distance of a hundred yards the blatant\ndrawl of drunkenness was discernible in their conversation. He passed\nquickly through them, and walked fast till he was clear of the reek of\nwhisky, tobacco, and stale turf smoke that followed them.\n\n\u201cWhat swine they are,\u201d he thought, drawing a long breath. He was walking\nin a bend of the road where trees stood up on either side, and in the\nshelter the twilight seemed to fall as heavily as dew. A cold, sharp\nmoon came forlornly from behind a wisp of cloud; the road glistened\npallidly in its light, and he saw a tall man walking unsteadily towards\nhim.\n\n\u201cGood-evening, Quin,\u201d said Mr. Glasgow, recognizing as he neared him the\nyoung man\u2019s white face and dark beard; \u201cI was sorry to hear of your\ntrouble. Only four days ago I was talking to your father, and I was\nvery much shocked to hear how sudden his death was.\u201d\n\nQuin stood still in the middle of the road, with his soft black hat\npulled over his brows. He breathed hard, and Glasgow thought he was\ngoing to cry. Instead of doing so, however, Quin caught him by the arm.\n\n\u201cHow dar\u2019 ye bring up me father\u2019s name to me?\u201d he said, in a loud voice.\n\u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for you and yer railway the stones wouldn\u2019t be over his\nhead this night!\u201d\n\nGlasgow shook his hand off.\n\n\u201cGo home, Quin, go home,\u201d he said, not unkindly. \u201cI\u2019ll talk to you\nto-morrow.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat do I want o\u2019 yer talk when ye have the bad luck dhrew down on us!\nGod knows ye talked enough to me father, blasht ye!\u201d Quin here unloosed\nhis terrified angry soul by the simple channel of bad language. \u201cI\u2019ll\nhave satisfaction out o\u2019 ye, ye English hound,\u201d he raved on, seeing that\nGlasgow was turning impassively away. \u201cYou that laughed when I axed ye\nto let me father out o\u2019 the bargain! Well I knew that there was none of\nus\u2019d do a day\u2019s good afther it----\u201d he faltered and sobbed.\n\nGlasgow knew enough of the man to take him quietly. He looked at him as\nhe stood in the moonlight with the tears running down his hairy cheeks,\nand walked away. He had not gone far when the imperative sting of a\nbicycle bell made him move to one side with the resentment inevitably\nroused in the pedestrian by that sound. Looking back he saw Lady Susan\nFrench skimming past Tom Quin; a wheeled apparition that must have been\nas startling to him as an Apocalyptic vision. Glasgow had dined at\nFrench\u2019s Court the night before, and, as he took off his cap, Lady Susan\nrecognized him.\n\n\u201cHow-de-do?\u201d she called out, and jumped off, \u201cI must take things easy\nand give my husband a chance. He was pounded by that awful hill outside\nLetter Kyle. Would you lead my bike? Thanks, awfully.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\n\nTorrents of soft grey rain were falling on Fornagh Hill. The\nfurze-bushes were grey with it, the slatey walls gleamed darkly, the\nstreams rushed in yellow fury over the ledges of rock. The new red coat\nof Dan O\u2019Driscoll the huntsman (familiarly known as Danny-O) had purple\npatches on it where the wet had soaked through, and, as he himself\nexpressed it to one of his friends, \u201cevery step he\u2019d take, the wather\nwas gabblin\u2019 in his boots.\u201d At the time of this remark, he was on foot\nin the centre of a crowd of men and boys, who had apparently risen from\nthe hillside to point out the precise spot where the fox had gone to\nground.\n\n\u201c\u2019Tis within in the gully he is!\u201d shouted one of them. \u201cI heard the\ndogs yowling, and whin I seen him, there wasn\u2019t the breadth o\u2019 yer nail\nbetween himself and the first o\u2019 thim.\u201d\n\nThat which the speaker had referred to as \u201ca gully\u201d was a covered-in\ndrain that carried off the waters of a small stream beneath a road and\ndown the hillside, its lower opening being at this moment blocked by a\nlarge yellow cur, whose owner was sedulously pinching its tail as a\nstimulant to its reluctant advance upon the fox. A small group of riders\nhuddled, with turned-up collars, under the lee of a high furzy fence;\ntheir muddy horses steamed, with the wet reins hanging loose on their\nnecks. One lady and four men were all that the rocks and fences of\nFornagh had left of the field. The dispensary doctor\u2019s chestnut was\nbleeding from a cut on the fetlock, Mr. James Mahony, a hard-riding\nfarmer, had a dark patch of mud on his shoulder, and Major Bunbury was\nswearing quietly to himself as he examined an over-reach that had\nstained his mare\u2019s white pastern pink with blood. Lady Susan\u2019s big bay\nhad lost a fore shoe. Lady Susan\u2019s face was an unbecoming, diffused\npink; the rain beaded her dark eyebrows and ran down her well-shaped\nnose; her hunting cravat might as well have been a wet dishclout. Under\nthe circumstances, perhaps, the epithets which she was applying to the\nweather and the country were excusable.\n\n\u201cWhat can have become of Hughie?\u201d she said for the twentieth time,\nbending her head to let the water run out of the brim of her hat; \u201cI\ndon\u2019t remember seeing him since that place where the cow ran after us.\u201d\n\n\u201cClinkin\u2019 good fencer she was too,\u201d said Major Bunbury, \u201cshe went two\nfields with us. Upon my soul, I don\u2019t know what happened to Hughie. I\u2019d\nquite enough to do to look out for myself.\u201d\n\n\u201cI hope he\u2019s all right,\u201d said Lady Susan, easily, \u201cthat horse wasn\u2019t\ngoing very kindly with him.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, he\u2019s all right. Probably he\u2019s done for the horse, though, in this\ninfernal country--bleedin\u2019 to death under a furze-bush somewhere, and no\nwonder, when they make their fences out of razors and porridge.\u201d\n\n\u201cGlasgow goes well,\u201d remarked Lady Susan, in a lower voice, eying Mr.\nGlasgow where he stood talking to a countryman. \u201cI was very glad he was\nthere to give me a lead--_you_ weren\u2019t much good to me, Bunny dear!\u201d\n\n\u201cWould it be putting too much delay on your ladyship to send for a\ntarrier?\u201d said Danny-O, the huntsman, approaching Lady Susan; \u201cthere\u2019s\none Dinny Hegarty that lives back on the hill here, and they say he have\na grand dog.\u201d\n\nLady Susan listened in bewilderment to this request.\n\n\u201cOh, certainly. I don\u2019t know what he wants,\u201d she continued in her\nstrident soprano, to Mr. Glasgow; \u201cI wish Hugh would come and look after\nhis own hounds, _I_ can\u2019t speak Irish.\u201d\n\n\u201cI saw Captain French having rather a time with that young horse,\u201d said\nMr. Glasgow suavely, \u201cyou ought to have a try at him, Lady Susan; a lady\nwill often make a horse go when a man can\u2019t--at least, some ladies can.\u201d\n\nLady Susan cast her dark eyes upon him and laughed.\n\n\u201cOh, I say, that\u2019s what they call blarney over here, isn\u2019t it? We call\nit humbug in England, you know!\u201d\n\nNone the less, her opinion of Mr. Glasgow rose, and, so much is there in\nthe manner of saying a stupid thing, he was pleased by the approval and\ndid not notice the stupidity.\n\nThe emissary to the home of \u201cthe grand dog\u201d was already on his way over\nthe hill, speeded by injunctions from his friends to \u201ckick off the owld\nshoes and be hirrying.\u201d The remainder of the party applied themselves to\nthe agreeable device of damming, at the upper end of the drain, the\nstream that flowed through it, with the object, as was explained, of\n\u201cgethering a flood,\u201d which when released, would wash the fox out before\nit.\n\nAt intervals a rider or two arrived, hot, wet, and full of explanations\nof the cause of delay, but of the new Master there was no sign. Slaney\nMorris was one of these later arrivals. She proffered no excuses, being\nprobably aware that these were made for her by her mount with an\neloquence beyond all gainsaying. Slaney had, in an unpretentious way,\nridden from her youth up, but she rode merely as a means of transit,\nvery much as people use omnibuses; her enthusiasms were reserved for\nother pursuits. She was now seated on an elderly brown mare, whose\nnatural _embonpoint_ was emphasized by Uncle Charles\u2019 humane scruples on\nthe subject of clipping horses. As a further tribute to his clemency,\nthe brown mare\u2019s tail had passed undocked through the changing fashions\nof fifteen years, and hung like a heavy black skirt, in righteous\nprotest against the spruce abbreviations of the French\u2019s Court horses.\n\nMr. Glasgow looked at Slaney, at her old-fashioned habit, at her saddle,\nhorned like the moon, at the mare\u2019s tufted fetlocks and dingy\ncurb-chain, and realized that Miss Morris\u2019s most sincere admirers could\nnot attribute to her the sacred quality of smartness. With Mr. Glasgow,\nas with most of his countrymen, smartness came next to cleanliness and\nconsiderably in advance of godliness. He had often ridden with Slaney,\nand the points he now uncomfortably noted had merely seemed an\nunimportant part of the background of a life whose charm depended on\nculture and not on fashion. He wished that he had not persuaded her to\ncome out.\n\nThe rain had turned to a thick mist; the hounds sat on the soaked grass\nin solemn and disconsolate patience, looking as sapient and as silly as\nonly hounds can; the crowd of country boys remained as indifferent to\nthe weather as if it had been a summer breeze; and after what seemed to\nthe shivering riders a long delay, the emissary returned, breathless,\nwith the grand dog slinking at his bare heels. The yellow cur was\nwithdrawn by the tail from the lower end of the drain, and the terrier\nwas rammed in like a charge into a gun, its owner, a very respectable\nelderly man, lying flat on his face in the mud, with his head in the\ndrain, bellowing encouragement. Faint squeaks from the bowels of the\nearth soon testified that the combat had begun, and the owner redoubled\nhis bawls of \u201cGood boy! good lad!\u201d At this moment a shout arose from the\nroad above that \u201cthe flood was loosed,\u201d in other words, that the\nartificers of the dam had lost patience, and had turned the pent-up\nwaters of the stream once more into the drain. Dinny Hegarty arose from\nthe lower end to protest, but he was too late. There was a chorus of\nshouts, \u201cThe dog\u2019ll be shoked\u201d--\u201cThe two o\u2019 thim\u2019ll be shoked\u201d--\u201cThere\nisn\u2019t as much wather as\u2019d shoke them\u201d--\u201cFaith, the divil himself\u2019d be\nshoked in it!\u201d\n\nWhat were the experiences of the sub-terranean combatants none could\ntell; the flood burst from the lower end of the drain and ran down the\nfield brown with mud and redolent of fox, and the pack, without a\nmoment\u2019s hesitation, pursued it hotly down the field till, amidst yells\nof laughter, it escaped from them into a boghole. After a brief\ninterval, muffled hostilities recommenced in the drain; two spades and a\npick appeared, as if by magic, and a shaft was sunk upon the squeaks.\n\n\u201cGive over the spades,\u201d shouted Danny-O, as the roofing stones of \u201cthe\ngully\u201d appeared, \u201cthe hands is the besht. Hurry now, before he\u2019ll go\nnorth in it from ye!\u201d\n\n\u201cArrah, what north! he haven\u2019t room to turn in it!\u201d\n\n\u201cDom yer sowl, he\u2019d turn in a kayhole!\u201d\n\n\u201cGo get a briar!\u201d roared another voice, \u201che isn\u2019t two foot from the\nhole! Twisht it in his hair now--twisht it, can\u2019t ye, and dhraw him\nout!\u201d\n\nThe principle was that adopted by dentists in extracting the nerve from\na tooth, but the briar failed of its office. The spade and pick were\nagain resorted to, and observations were taken by a small boy.\n\n\u201cThe daag have him!\u201d\n\n\u201cIs it by the tail?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, but in a throttlesome way!\u201d\n\n\u201cCome out now,\u201d interposed Danny-O, \u201ctill I thry could I ketch a howlt\nof him.\u201d\n\n\u201cPut on yer glove, Dan; take care would he bite ye.\u201d \u201cSure, the gloves\nis no use, only silk.\u201d \u201cA fox can\u2019t bite through silk. Wrop yer hand in\nsilk and he can\u2019t put a tooth through it!\u201d Thus, and much more from the\nchorus, while Dan, addressing an eye of scornful and civilized humour to\nMr. Glasgow, commanded that a \u201cgowlogue\u201d and a bag should be brought to\nhim. The young man who had been leading his horse about leaped into the\nsaddle and undertook the errand, and the little boy who had been\nentrusted with the doctor\u2019s wounded chestnut immediately pursued him at\nan emulous canter, with his bare feet thrust into the stirrup-leathers.\nPresently both returned at full gallop, one with a forked stick, the\nother with a meal sack, and then, dazzled by success, proceeded to race\nround the field. The hounds started once more in pursuit, and were\nthemselves pursued by Danny-O, while the digging party broke into\nenthusiastic cheers.\n\nLady Susan was not at all amused. She felt much as a devout clergyman\nmight feel at beholding a low travesty of the Church service, and she\nwas almost shocked at the way in which Major Bunbury and Mr. Glasgow\nlaughed.\n\n\u201cMen will laugh at anything,\u201d she said, turning to Slaney, \u201cbut _I_ call\nthis awful rot, you know. Hughie gave a lot of money for these hounds,\nand this sort of nonsense should not be allowed.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m afraid you\u2019ve got to learn a good many new things about hunting\nwhen you come to this part of Ireland, and to forget a good many more!\u201d\nsaid Glasgow, looking up at her with his charming smile. It was a smile\nthat Slaney had often thought of when she lay awake at night, but in\nnone of her reveries had she ever fancied its light being shed upon Lady\nSusan.\n\nAt about this moment Hugh, three miles away, was engaged in pulling down\nthe stones of a loosely-built wall with the handle of his whip. He was\nriding a tall, powerful, young grey horse, and was holding him hard on\nthe curb as he leaned over and pushed at the stones. It was obvious that\nhorse and rider were on bad terms. Hugh\u2019s face was white, and splashed\nwith mud--mud from the hoofs of the farmers\u2019 horses--behind whom he had\ngalloped through dirty lanes; there was a long red scratch on the grey\u2019s\nshoulder that looked as if it had been made by a spur, and Hugh\u2019s new\nvelvet cap had obviously been on the ground. The wall was reduced to two\nfeet high before Captain French turned his horse and put him at it. He\ntried to pull him into a walk, and swore at him as he curveted and\nsidled, chafing against the curb. The horse refused, whirled round, and\nfinally bucked over the wall, lifting his rider perceptibly in the\nsaddle. There was but one fence now between Hugh and the road. It was a\nlarge bank with furze-bushes growing on it, and a small ditch in front\nof it. Hugh trotted down its whole length with a sick, angry heart,\nlooking for a low place.\n\n\u201cMy God!\u201d he said to himself, \u201cI can\u2019t ride at it. It\u2019s no good trying.\u201d\n\nOne spot seemed to him a trifle lower than the rest, and setting his\nteeth, he put the horse at it. The effort to command himself and not to\npull the horse\u2019s head as he came to the jump amounted in its way to\nagony; he did not know if he were glad or sorry when the grey, soured by\nthe day\u2019s misadventures, swerved from the fence and bucketed round the\nfield, pulling hard and trying to get his head down. Hugh stopped him\nand dismounted. He would not think of what he was going to do, but there\nwas a hard knot in his throat as he walked the grey across the field. He\ntied the lash of his whip to the reins, and climbing on to the fence,\nled him over it. The horse followed him as lightly and quietly as a dog,\nand stood still to let him untie the lash. His hand shook, and he did it\nawkwardly, while the lump in his throat grew bigger.\n\nThe events of the morning were present with him. The jovial\nbreakfast-table at which he had played so sorry a part; the look of the\ngrey horse bucking as he was led round to the door; the cold, sick\nfeeling when the hounds opened on the fox in covert; the look of\nGlasgow\u2019s back as he and the others disappeared over the hill, leaving\nhim stuck at the first fence, engaged in that half-hearted battle with\nhis horse that had resulted in a fall for them both. He hated them\nall--Bunbury, Glasgow, the road-riding faction, who had volunteered with\nhorrible sympathy to show him the short cuts: he almost hated his wife\nfor the easy confidence in him that he knew he did not deserve.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll get over it,\u201d he said to himself, swearing furiously and\nfutilely. \u201cAfter all, this is pretty nearly the first time I\u2019ve been on\na horse since that smash. Damn you, you brute, keep quiet!\u201d This to the\ngrey, who was fidgeting and pulling, with his ears pricked in\nexpectation of anything and everything. \u201cI\u2019ve never had a right feel\nabout a horse since that time.\u201d He pulled out his flask and took a\ndrink--his wife had given it to him--and as he put it back he thought,\nwith almost the bitterest pang of all, that she would never\nunderstand--that he could never tell her.\n\nThe note of the horn struck on his ear, and, looking back through the\nrain, he saw the hounds coming quietly along the road behind him. Lady\nSusan and Mr. Glasgow were riding in front of them, and he knew that the\ntime had come when he would have to begin to tell lies.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\n\nSlaney was reading Swinburne\u2019s \u201cAtalanta in Calydon.\u201d It was Sunday\nafternoon, and she had dined in the middle of the day. It would soon be\ntime to get ready for afternoon service.\n\nBefore beginning to read she had looked for a moment at the name\n\u201cWilfrid Glasgow\u201d at the beginning of the book. The same hand that had\nwritten the name had marked with heavy and frequent lines the passages\nmost approved by the writer. It is a habit that may be intolerable to\nsucceeding readers, but Slaney did not take offence. Her hazel eyes,\nthat had surveyed Uncle Charles this morning with such impartial\nseverity when he upset his cup of tea, dilated and lingered among the\nringing lines; she raised them and looked out with a quickened pulse at\nthe bright afternoon and the clear rugged outline of the mountain. The\ndrawing-room window commanded a slope of rough lawn, the black and\nswirling curve of a river, an opening to the west through a young wood\nof larch and Scotch fir letting in the barren mountain, leaning aslant,\nand the sunsets that wrought and died upon its shoulder.\n\n    \u201cIn his heart is a blind desire,\n     In his eyes foreknowledge of death.\u201d\n\nThe approval of Mr. Glasgow was firmly and neatly given to the passage;\nshe felt it to be the mouthpiece of his soul, and she felt also that\nhers was probably the only soul within a radius of twenty miles capable\nof apprehending Mr. Glasgow\u2019s in its higher walks. Slaney remembered\nthat at dinner last night Lady Susan had gaily announced that she hated\nall poetry--\u201cat least all good poetry.\u201d The recollection was\ninconsequent, but it was agreeable.\n\n\u201cMrs. Quin from Cahirdreen\u2019s outside in the back hall, Miss Slaney, and\nwould be thankful to speak to you.\u201d\n\nThus Tierney, the pantry boy; Slaney was irritably aware that two\nbuttons were missing from his jacket. It would need poetry of the\nhighest moral tendency to preserve the serenity of an Irish housekeeper.\n\nSlaney went out into the draughty hall wondering dismally if it would be\nthe cough-bottle or the burn-plaster that would be required, and found\nthe widow Quin awaiting her in tears. Slaney had the turn for doctoring\nthat is above all things adorable to the Irish poor, whose taste for the\ncontraband finds in a female quack a gratification almost comparable to\n\u201cpotheen-making.\u201d She understood them and their ailments by nature and\nby practice, and, since her childhood, had been accustomed to go to\ntheir deathbeds, and their funerals. Such scenes moved her strongly, but\nshe had learned to prize the artistic value of strong emotion.\n\nThe hood of Mrs. Quin\u2019s blue cloak was drawn over her face, a fact\nimplying mystery as well as tribulation. Slaney immediately came to the\nconclusion that her husband\u2019s will had not been satisfactory, and\naddressed herself to the task of arriving at the object of the visit\nwith as little preamble as possible. Nevertheless it was with much\ncircumlocution, and with many apprehensive glances at the closed door,\nthrough which was audible Uncle Charles\u2019 Scripture lesson to the\npantry-boy, that the widow Quin finally delivered her soul.\n\n\u201cBut whatever I cried afther Dan,\u201d she said, after a lengthy exordium on\nthe virtues of the deceased, \u201cTom have him cried out an\u2019 out, an\u2019 indeed\n\u2019tis for I knowing the wish you had always for Tom that I came down\nthroubling your honour. Sure yerself knows he was always innocent like,\nand when he was a child not a word out of him the longest year ever came\nonly talkin\u2019 of God and the fairies, and the like o\u2019 that, and that was\nno way for any poor crayture to be. Sure yourself knows well the way he\nwas. Ye had undherstanding always, God bless ye----\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you afraid his head is getting wrong again?\u201d interrupted Slaney\ninexorably. Mrs. Quin fell at once into a rancour and tearful whisper.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s whatever owld talk the people have about that place above in\nPark-na-Moddhera that has him desthroyed. Every spadeful that\u2019s throwing\nout o\u2019 that hill it\u2019s the same to him as if it was down on his heart\nthey were throwing it, and sure they say that grey fox or whatever it\nwas poor Danny seen is like a witch or a fairy that\u2019d dhraw down bad\nluck if it wouldn\u2019t be let alone, the Lord save us----\u201d she crossed\nherself; \u201cdidn\u2019t Danny tell me one time he felt like a wind from the say\ncoming bechuxt his skin and his blood afther he seeing the same fox?\u201d\n\n\u201cBut Tom has nothing to say to the hill now,\u201d said Slaney; \u201cwhy should\nthe bad luck come to him any more than to Mr. Glasgow?\u201d\n\n\u201cSure isn\u2019t that what I\u2019m tellin\u2019 him, but what himself says that it\u2019s\nbechuxt the two o\u2019 thim. God help the crayture, ye wouldn\u2019t like to be\nlistening to him.\u201d Mrs. Quin wiped her eyes and groaned; \u201cmaybe your\nhonour would spake a word to him, or maybe\u201d--she turned a crafty eye on\nSlaney--\u201cye\u2019d spake a word to Mr. Glasgow, maybe he wouldn\u2019t ax to take\nany more gravel out o\u2019 the hill if it was your honour told him the way\nTom is.\u201d\n\nThe opportunity of speaking to Mr. Glasgow did not come as soon as\nSlaney had expected. He had given her to understand, in the ambiguous\nspecial manner with which he chose to beguile her, that he would meet\nher at afternoon service, and walk home with her; till the second lesson\nthe special manner was ample guarantee, then the ambiguity began to\nsuggest itself to her memory. She walked home with Uncle Charles, and\nlistened for the twentieth time to his reprobation of the Canon\u2019s popish\npractice of turning to the east during the Creed. The Honourable\nCharles Herrick was an elderly and prosperous bachelor, whose blameless\nlife was devoted to two pursuits, gardening and writing controversial\nletters to the Church papers. He was a small, dry gentleman, very clean,\nand not in the least deaf. Strangers always experienced a slight shock\non finding that he was not a clergyman.\n\nSlaney put away her best hat, and felt that there were yet many hours\ntill bedtime. Those who lay out with a confident hand the order of a\nday\u2019s events would do well to prepare also an alternative.\n\nYet Fate had, after all, reserved a blessing.\n\nSlaney had scarcely settled herself by the fire, when she heard Lady\nSusan\u2019s voice in the hall, and following on it the voices of Hugh and\nMr. Glasgow. The afternoon leaped again into life and meaning. As she\ncame into the lamp-lit hall to meet her visitors, Lady Susan and Major\nBunbury realized in their different ways that she was better-looking\nthan they had believed. Her dark hair rose full and soft from her white\nforehead, in the simplicity that is often extolled, but is seldom\nbecoming; her complexion was pale and tender with western air and\ncountry living, the refinement that was so ineffective at Hurlingham was\nhere pervading and subtle. Lady Susan looked hard at her, and promoted\nher at once and ungrudgingly from the ranks of non-combatants. Major\nBunbury felt that his special sister (who read Carlyle and played\nScarlatti) would like to meet her. Although he hunted six days a week,\nhe kept a soul somewhere, and his sister knew where it was.\n\nThey all sat down in the firelight of the drawing-room, where the tall\nwest window showed a clear twilight sky, tinged with pink, and barbed\nwith a moon as hard and keen as a scimitar. There was a quaint and\nsprawling paper on the walls, a band of brass gleamed round the wide\nopening of the fire-place, a slight smell of turf and wood smoke added\nits sentiment of country quietness to the air.\n\n\u201cIt was jolly coming over,\u201d said Lady Susan, displaying a good deal of\ndrab gaiter as she leaned back and sipped her tea, \u201cbut we\u2019re not going\nto have any hunting to-morrow. My bike was breaking ice on all the\npuddles.\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought it was going to break _me_ when you overtook me in the avenue\njust now,\u201d said Mr. Glasgow, in a tone that masked surprisingly well the\nsentiments he had expressed to Slaney about the modern young woman and\nher bicycle. He had not thought of mentioning that when the modern young\nwoman possessed a figure that did not admit of a second opinion, and a\ntitle, his views might be subject to modification.\n\n\u201cI shan\u2019t think of taking the hounds out to-morrow,\u201d said Hugh; \u201cDan\nknows the country, and he says it would not be the least use.\u201d\n\nInwardly he was telling himself that he was a coward and a cur, because\nhe felt such entire thankfulness for the frost. He had told them all how\nthe leg that he had broken at polo had stopped him last Friday, when\nthe fox had been run to ground on Fornagh Hill, and he hated himself for\nhis own fluency in lying. His horror and despair were out of all\nproportion to the fact of a broken nerve. He could do but one thing\nwell, and that one thing was taken from him. He loved his wife with all\nthe strength of a very simple and kindly nature, but some new, chill\ninstinct told him that this was a disaster that it would be wise to hide\nfrom her. So far, at all events, his secret was in his own keeping.\n\nFor ten full minutes Lady Susan talked of the run, lamented the\nmisconduct of the grey horse, and with an enjoyment of a twice-told\ntale, that was characteristic of her very moderate mental abilities,\nregaled Mr. Glasgow with excruciating imitations of Danny-O and his\nsatellites on the occasion of the digging out of the fox. Glasgow, with\nhis eyes fixed on her glowing face, listened delightedly; Slaney,\nthrough her talk to the others, was conscious of a new-found\nbitterness.\n\n\u201cI say, Slaney!\u201d Lady Susan called out, \u201cI want you to talk sense to\nyour friend, Danny-O. The old pig refuses to draw that gorse above the\nrailway--_you_ know,\u201d turning to Glasgow, \u201cthat place where the cutting\nis; he said it was an unlucky place, and that the fox there was a witch!\nSuch rot!\u201d\n\nSlaney did not answer at once. There are some people for whom the limits\nof the possible seem to be set farther out than for the rest of the\nworld. They see and hear things inexplicable; for them the darkened\nglass is less dark, to them all things are possible. It cannot be called\nsuperstition--being neither ignorant dread nor self-interested faith; it\nseems like the possession of another sense--imperfect, yet distinct from\nall others. Slaney had seen and heard--between the sunset and the\ndawn--things not easily accounted for; she herself accepted them without\nfear; but she knew--as any one who knows well a half-civilized people\nmust know--how often a superstition is justified of its works.\n\n\u201cI often think,\u201d she said slowly, \u201cthat it isn\u2019t much good to go against\nthe country people in these things.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t agree with you, Miss Morris,\u201d struck in Glasgow. \u201cI never give\nin to them. The other day I told one of my fellows to cut down a thorn\nbush that came in my way surveying. He told me it was a holy thorn, and\nhe wouldn\u2019t stir it. I just took the bill-hook and cut it down myself.\u201d\n\nMr. Glasgow gave his fair moustache a twist, and looked at Lady Susan.\nHe had a noble gift of self-confidence, and a quietness in manifesting\nit that made him immediately attractive to lesser intelligences.\n\n\u201cQuite right too,\u201d said Lady Susan, in her strong clear voice, \u201cthat\u2019s\nthe way to talk to these people. Why, it\u2019s as bad as the Land League,\nnot being allowed to draw one of the nicest coverts in the country, for\nrubbish of that kind. Hughie, if you don\u2019t kill that old white fox I\nshall think you\u2019re in a funk too. You Irish people are all the same. I\ndon\u2019t care, Mr. Glasgow and I will take the hounds to Cahirdreen, and\nwe\u2019ll have that white brush! I want it awfully to show to the people at\nhome, and tell them I got a witch\u2019s brush!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou could say it was an evolution of the broomstick,\u201d said Slaney.\n\nMr. Glasgow laughed, and it gave Slaney some satisfaction to see that\nLady Susan was bewildered.\n\nWhen the French\u2019s Court party betook themselves to their bicycles for\nthe homeward ride Mr. Glasgow came back from the hall door close to\nSlaney. She had stirred the logs till they blazed strongly, and the warm\neager flicker met the unearthly stillness of the moonlight.\n\n\u201cI couldn\u2019t get away in time for church,\u201d said Glasgow, as if dropping\ninto an undercurrent of both their minds; \u201cI had a terrible amount of\nwork to get through. It isn\u2019t finished now, but--I just let it remain\nunfinished.\u201d He looked at her, to see in what manner she would show her\ngratification, and found her eyes cast down, and her sensitive mouth\nclosed in an unsympathetic line. He had never known her other than\nsympathetic, with that quick brain sympathy that was especially hers;\nshe had shown him without reserve or femininity that his conversation\nwas agreeable to her, but her heart was hidden from him, perhaps from\nher own inability to reveal it. He felt, as his eyes dwelt on her, that\nshe was complex and unexplored; he was pleasurably aware that she was\nattractive.\n\n\u201cWhat have you been doing with yourself?\u201d he went on, in his confident,\nquiet voice. \u201cI thought you would have come down to the cutting\nyesterday to see how we are getting on.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was too cold,\u201d said Slaney, indifferently; \u201cbesides, I went to\nFrench\u2019s Court.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt _was_ rather cold, especially when one waited and was\ndisappointed,\u201d said Glasgow. \u201cI always looked upon you as a person who\nkept your promises.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere is only one thing more irrational than making promises, and that\nis keeping them,\u201d said Slaney, with a flippancy that Glasgow was not\naccustomed to in her; \u201cbut in this case there was no promise.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen a thing has happened very often, one has a right to expect it to\nhappen again,\u201d he said; \u201cthat is how one arrives at most conclusions.\u201d\n\n\u201cSometimes things come to a conclusion of themselves,\u201d said Slaney, with\na little laugh.\n\nShe looked up and found his eyes waiting to meet hers. They had an\nundisguised, irrelevant tenderness, and Slaney was surprised into\naccepting it for one silent moment, while her heart beat and her head\nswam. She recovered herself, as one might struggle up out of soft\nground. The thought of Lady Susan was like setting her feet again on\nhard rock.\n\n\u201cMrs. Quin was here to-day,\u201d she said, catching at the first subject\nthat suggested itself. \u201cFrom what she tells me, I am afraid that Tom\nQuin must be going out of his mind.\u201d\n\n\u201cI should believe that if I thought he had any mind to go out of,\u201d said\nGlasgow irritably. Slaney was not playing the part he had cast for her,\nand the subject of the Quins was not calculated to soothe him. \u201cThe\nwhole family have persecuted me about that gravel-pit--Quin, and his\nmother, and the red-haired sister, and all. I wonder if they really\nthink I am going to give up working the place to please them!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I think they do,\u201d replied Slaney, staring before her into the blue\nand pink and yellow flames of the wood fire. Then, after a pause, \u201cI am\nnot quite sure that I don\u2019t sympathize with them.\u201d\n\n\u201cSympathize with what?\u201d asked Glasgow impatiently. \u201cWith their distress,\nor with their superstition?\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps a little of both.\u201d\n\nAt his tone her fastidious upper lip had set itself again into an\nunsympathetic line; her forehead seemed as white and quiet as the\nmoonlight behind her.\n\n\u201cVery well,\u201d said Glasgow, provoked and scornful, yet beyond all things\nattracted, \u201cI take all consequences. I appropriate all the ill-luck. Now\nwill you sympathize with _me_?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, don\u2019t!\u201d she exclaimed, putting out her hand with a horrified\ngesture, as if what he had said would be instantly overheard.\n\n\u201cWill you?\u201d he repeated, deliciously perceptive of her fear, and before\nhe realized what he was doing he had kissed the fastidious, spiritual\nmouth, and found it a trembling and human one.\n\n\u201cYou can learn twelve of the \u2018I wills\u2019 of the Psalms for next Sunday,\nTierney,\u201d said Uncle Charles\u2019 voice in the hall, \u201cand three more of the\n\u2018Plain Reasons against joining the Church of Rome.\u2019\u201d\n\nUncle Charles opened the drawing-room door as he made the concluding\ncharge, and met Mr. Glasgow in the act of taking leave of his niece.\n\nWhen Slaney went up to her room that night she sat for a long time by\nthe fire, with her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. There\nwas a little table by her. On it were an old-fashioned desk, a good many\nbooks, and, half-emerging from the paper in which it had been wrapped, a\nnumber of the _Fortnightly Review_. She sat for a long time, and\nsometimes in the silence of the house the beating of her heart was like\na voice in her ears, telling her irrepressibly of her own weakness and\nstrength, of depths of herself hitherto unknown. Her pure and ardent\nnature was awakening out of narrowness, her clear intellect scaled all\npossibilities like a strong climber.\n\nAs if she had yielded to herself for too long, she sat up at length, and\nafter a moment, took up the _Fortnightly Review_, and began to turn its\npages over--Glasgow had brought it to her that afternoon--and she\nsearched for the article that he had commended. Cold logic and\nrelentless statistics would inflict composure, would steady her down to\nthe level of sleep.\n\nTwo of the pages fell apart where a sheet of paper had been thrust in;\nshe was abruptly confronted by a letter in a large, heavy handwriting.\nThe eye is quicker than the will. Before she snatched her eyes away she\nhad taken in its half-a-dozen lines. For some moments she sat perfectly\nstill, while the blood came with a rush to her cheeks and forehead. Then\nshe crumpled up the letter and threw it into the fire.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\n\nThe frost that had sharpened the moon and armoured the pools, held its\nground for but one night. The voice of the south moaned in the\ncasements, a grey, strong rain followed it, and on the morning of the\nsecond day a clean wind blew across the soaked fields, and the sun came\nforth in a sky of new-born blue.\n\nTom Quin\u2019s red-haired sister stood at the door of her house, and looked\nacross the furzy uplands to where a long wood climbed and sank on a spur\nof Cahirdreen hill. Her hair seemed on fire in the sunshine, and the\npupils of her light eyes were contracted to pin points by the glare from\nthe white-washed lintel.\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s coming,\u201d she said, turning back in to the house, where her mother\nwas sitting on a stool by the fire, with a cup of tea in her hand, and a\nbare-legged grandchild squatting beside her on the warm hearthstone.\nSince her bereavement, the widow Quin breakfasted fitfully by\nhalf-cupfuls at intervals during the morning, and did not sit at the\ntable.\n\n\u201cOh, musha, musha, a quare hour o\u2019 the day he comes to his breakfast,\ngoin\u2019 on eleven o\u2019clock, an\u2019 he that wint out before it was makin\u2019 day!\u201d\n\nMrs. Quin shed tears, and little Mikeen utilized the opportunity by\nburying his dirty face in her cup, and taking a long drink of the bitter\nstrong tea.\n\nTom Quin did not waste words on his family when he came in. He sat down\non the settle, with his hat on, and his eyes fixed on the floor between\nhis muddy boots. His dog, a black-and-grey cur, remotely allied to the\ncollie breed, snuffed with an habituated nose at the pots and pans under\nthe dresser, found no change in them since he had licked them the night\nbefore, passed the lair of the cat with respectful rigidity, and lay\ndown as if tired, submitting like a Christian and a gentleman to the\nfondlings of Mikeen.\n\n\u201cHave they the bridge finished yet, in Tully Bog?\u201d asked Maria Quin, as\nshe took the teapot up from its nest in the hot ashes.\n\nQuin raised his heavy eyes quickly.\n\n\u201cYe think ye\u2019re damn wise,\u201d he said, \u201cfollyin\u2019 me, an\u2019 axin\u2019 me this an\u2019\nthat what was I doin\u2019. Haven\u2019t I throuble enough without the likes o\u2019\nyee annoyin\u2019 me!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, asthoreen,\u201d wailed his mother, \u201csure it\u2019s only that we\u2019re that much\nunaisy for the way ye are, that we\u2019d ax where\u2019d ye go. Take the cup o\u2019\ntay, asthore, don\u2019t be talkin\u2019 that way.\u201d\n\nQuin relapsed into silence, and Maria was in the act of pouring out his\ntea, when the long sweet note of a horn struck suddenly on their ears,\nand Watch sprang out of the open door, barking his shrill vulgar bark,\nand sniffing the breeze. He was hardly quicker than his master. Before\nMaria had time to put down the teapot, Quin was outside, listening and\nstaring, and cursing the dog into silence. He saw two red-coated\nhorsemen trotting round the end of the wood, and the note of the horn\ncame again, smooth and melodious. Quin started at a run in the direction\nof the covert, drawing hard, sobbing breaths as he ran.\n\nOn the road at the other side of the covert, Slaney was sitting on\nIsabella, the elderly brown mare, and wishing that she had stayed at\nhome. To sit on Isabella\u2019s back was an experience almost distinct from\nriding; it suggested more than anything else a school-room sofa\npropelled into action by a sour and sluggish sense of the inevitable, a\nschool-room sofa that partook of the nature of the governess. Slaney\u2019s\nsharply-cut face was pale and sleepless-looking; she was no longer the\nethereal creature of the firelight and moonlight, merely an\nill-turned-out girl, with interesting eyes and a clear skin, who\nappeared to be absorbed in discussing bronchitis kettles with the\ndispensary doctor. Lady Susan was a little farther down the road on her\nhusband\u2019s grey, the horse who was, so far, the only creature possessed\nof the knowledge that Hugh was afraid of him. He was well aware that\nLady Susan was not, but that, after all, was a fact that was patent to\nall beholders.\n\nMr. Glasgow, turning away from Lady Susan, and looking back as he\nturned, thought that she was as good a thing to look at as he had ever\nseen. He was on his way to Slaney, and as he neared her he attuned his\neye to that expression of understanding, even of tenderness, that the\noccasion required. He delighted in the position; it was intricate, it\nwas a little risky, and in spite of Slaney\u2019s wrinkled habit and\nold-fashioned hat, he still recognized the attractive quality in her. He\nfelt that it was discriminating and chivalrous of him to be able to do\nso, and looking down on her from the mental elevation of his assured\nhorsemanship, and his power of being agreeable to women, he anticipated\nwith sufficient pleasure another harmless deviation or so from the\nordinary paths of friendship.\n\n\u201cSo you did come out, after all,\u201d he began, riding possessively up to\nher, \u201cin spite of the Witch! Do you know that Dan\u2019s afraid to go into\nthe covert, and Major Bunbury\u2019s taking the hounds through it!\u201d\n\nThe sun shone on the top of his head as he took his hat off; Slaney had\nnot before noticed the exact extent of his baldness. She gave him a\nconventional smile and nod, and went on talking to Dr. Hallahan. Glasgow\nwaited, lighting a cigarette, and, at the next pause, spoke to her\nagain. His eyes were full of meaning and penetration, and he knew that\nthey were kind, but hers met them with the merest politeness as she\nanswered him. There was a perplexed whimper from a hound down at the\nlower end of the covert; Glasgow caught up his reins and trotted away in\nthe direction in which Lady Susan was already moving. This was not the\nmoment for winding back through the maze of Slaney\u2019s mood; he held the\nclue and could use it at his leisure.\n\nSlaney detached herself from Dr. Hallahan, and rode alone up the\nmountain road. The hounds had drawn the gorse outside the covert, and\nwere slowly working up through a wood of scrubby aboriginal oak trees,\nwoven together by a tangle of briars; round the outskirts a band of\nyoung firs and larches imparted an effect of amenity, but the domain of\nthe oaks had as impracticable an air as the curled and bossed forehead\nof the mountain bull that was shouting defiance from a neighbouring\nfield. Slaney moved slowly on and up till she reached the top corner of\nthe covert; and pausing there, the brown mare proceeded, with her usual\nair of infinite leisure, to crop the green spikes of a furze-bush. The\nsmoke from Quin\u2019s farm rose bluely from the valley below, a long stretch\nof brown country spangled with lakes lay beyond, and behind all, rising\nto meet the eye, the sea stood high like a silver wall against the\nhorizon. Curlew were crying on the sunny slopes above Slaney, and the\nwhistling of green plover filled the air. No one was in sight save a\nrider posted out on the hill to watch the top of the covert; the\ninevitable mob of country boys was at the lower end, and the sound of\nHugh\u2019s and Major Bunbury\u2019s voices, holloaing to the hounds, came\ndistantly from the bottom of the wood.\n\nSlaney sat quite still, while the life and freshness of the morning\npassed by her, and left her dull as stone. The thud of a footstep that\nran, and laboured in running, did not make her look round; she thought\nit was the usual country boy till she saw Tom Quin come lurching and\nstumbling round the far corner of the wood, with his dog panting at his\nheels. Even at a distance of a hundred yards or more an extravagance as\nof despair was unmistakable about him. As Slaney looked at him, a hound,\nnot far off in the covert, gave two or three contralto notes in\nsuccession, and at the same moment there was a rustle in the bracken, a\nfew yards in front of her. A grey face parted the brown fern and looked\nout at her; a fox\u2019s face, with its oblique crafty eyes and sharp refined\nmuzzle, but the fur was silver-grey.\n\n\u201cA thing like an Arctic fox,\u201d Slaney heard Lady Susan\u2019s voice declaiming\non the ice at Hurlingham.\n\nThe fox slipped down off the fence through the bracken, crossed the road\nwith a dainty whisk of its grey brush, glided up the opposite bank like\na shadow, and was gone. A cold and prickling sensation passed over\nSlaney, that feeling of \u201ca wind from the say coming betune the skin an\u2019\nthe blood\u201d that old Dan Quin had felt. It died away, and left her with a\nbounding heart and a reddened cheek, and a sense of intense\nparticipation in the events of the moment, instead of the lifeless\npassivity of five minutes before. Her courage repelled the shock to her\ninstinct, but her understanding had taken a lift to the unknown and the\nimpossible, and in spite of the morning sunshine and the candid blue\nsky, she could not altogether right herself.\n\nA long shout of \u201cgone away\u201d came from the watcher on the hill, and the\nhounds came tumbling out of the wood in the lovely headlong rush that\nhas the shape of a wave and a thousandfold its impetuosity. With the\nindescribable chorus of yells and squeals that is known as full cry,\nthey swept past Slaney, and it was at this juncture that Isabella, the\nbrown mare, found herself the victim of a gush of enthusiasm. It may\nhave been a survival in her old soul of the days when she had, according\nto tradition, carried the huntsman of the county pack; it may have been\nthat she, like her rider, was lifted out of herself by the discerning of\nspiritual things; at any rate, when she found her head pointed at a\npromising place in the fence, she bundled over it with an agility for\nwhich no one would have given her credit, and Slaney found herself\ngalloping alone behind the racing pack.\n\nThe fox had done all that was most unexpected, had gone away into the\nteeth of the wind, in a direction wide of any known destination, and the\nfield, both horse and foot, were all left at the wrong side of the big\nirregular covert. Yet Slaney had not gone a hundred yards when Lady\nSusan and Glasgow were behind her like a storm, and shot past with their\nhorses pulling in the wildness of a first burst. The next fence was a\ntowering bank, wet and rotten and blind with briars, feasible only at a\nspot where a breach made for cattle had been built up with loose stones.\nGlasgow came first at it, checking his young horse\u2019s ingenuous desire to\nbuck, and sitting down for a big fly. He was suddenly confronted by Tom\nQuin at the far side, brandishing a stone as big as a turnip as if in\nthe act to throw it, and the young horse swung round with a jerk that\nperceptibly tried his rider\u2019s seat. Lady Susan was close in his tracks,\nand, far from trying to stop her horse, she gave him a vigorous blow\nwith her hunting-crop, and drove him full pace at the fence and its\ndefender. The grey horse jumped like a deer, and Quin perforce sprang\naside, cursing vilely and threatening Lady Susan with the stone. She was\ngone in an instant, and, before Glasgow had pulled his horse together,\nSlaney and Isabella were charging the place, Slaney with a white face\nand a crooked hat, Isabella with her long nose poked well forward to\ntake her distance. With an economical yet sufficient hoist of her hind\nquarters the old mare was over, while Tom Quin remained staring as if\nstupefied by the feat.\n\n\u201cGo away, Tom!\u201d called Slaney, as she passed him. \u201cDon\u2019t mind them--it\u2019s\nno use--go home!\u201d\n\nShe seemed to herself to be calling out of a dream; yet she had never\nfelt so strongly and defiantly alive. The thud of galloping hoofs was\nin her ears, and she looked back in time to see Glasgow\u2019s horse clear\nthe stones with a long bound, and receive a blow across the nose from\nTom Quin\u2019s stick as he landed. Drag as she might she could not calm\nIsabella, who was bucketing through the heather tussocks with\nschool-girl ardour; when she looked again, Quin was holding his hand to\nhis face, as if he had been struck upon it, and was raving in that\ninarticulate futility of rage that is not good to see. Glasgow came on\nlike a thunderbolt, and was beside Slaney in a moment, his horse still\nrampant from the blow.\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s mad!\u201d she called out through the wind that sang in her teeth. \u201cHe\ndidn\u2019t know what he was doing.\u201d\n\n\u201cDidn\u2019t he, though!\u201d Glasgow shouted back, his eyes tracking the hounds\nwhere they were flitting like white birds across a green field near the\nbrow of the hill; \u201che knows now, I think!\u201d\n\nLady Susan was a hundred yards ahead. Glasgow let his horse go, reducing\nthe distance at every stride, and leaving Slaney behind. He did not seem\nlike the lover who had found out the secret of her lips two evenings\nago.\n\nOther riders were close to her now, converging from different points;\nshe was dimly aware of Major Bunbury below her on the left, riding hard\nand steady to pick up a bad start; she saw Danny\u2019s red coat far away in\nthe heather; she vaguely missed Hugh\u2019s. She was in the green field at\nlast, with the hounds casting themselves at the farther side of an ugly\nstone-faced bank plumed with furze-bushes. The grey had refused, with\nthe nervousness of youth and inexperience, and Glasgow was looking about\nfor a better place to get over. At the same moment Slaney saw Hugh\ngalloping towards them up a hillside track on the bay that his wife had\nridden the Friday before, and through the maddening din of the hounds\nopening again on the line, she heard Lady Susan call to him to give\nthem a lead.\n\n\u201cThere, Hughie!\u201d she cried, \u201cbetween the two furze-bushes is the only\nchance. That horse will do it flying.\u201d\n\nHugh cantered to the place, the bay horse pulling and fuming; he looked\nat the steep face of the bank, the deep ditch in front of it, and knew\nthat to save his soul he could not ride at it.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s not good enough,\u201d he called out, turning his horse. \u201cWe must try\nround some other way.\u201d\n\n\u201cTry round!\u201d ejaculated Lady Susan, rushing the grey at the fence. \u201cLook\nat the hounds running like the devil over the top of the hill! Come up,\nhorse!\u201d\n\nThe grey horse recognized the inevitable; he came up on to the top of\nthe bank with an effort, and jumped boldly out across the boggy stream\non the far side. Glasgow came next, getting over with a scramble, and\nafter him followed the wholly incredible Isabella. As Major Bunbury,\ncramming his screwy mare at the same place, saw Isabella\u2019s crafty hind\nlegs fetch securely up on the bank, he said to himself, with some\nexcitement, that Miss Morris was a clinking good girl, and that there\nwas nothing in creation like an Irish mare, young or old. At this\njuncture his own mare alighted on her chest and nose, and the eulogy was\ninterrupted.\n\nSlaney was but chaotically conscious of subsequent events. The hounds\ncrested the hill, and sped down into the brown and green patchwork of\nthe rough country at the other side, and in a dream-like rush she\npursued the flying figures of Glasgow and Lady Susan, scuffling and\nsliding down rocky hillsides, straining up again with fingers twisted in\nIsabella\u2019s abundant mane, scrambling over rotten fences, splashing and\nlabouring through bog, bucking over loose walls, while physical effort\nand the excitement of success were mixed up with the fragrance of the\nbeaten sod, the peaty whiff of the broken bog fence, and the\nconsciousness of encomium and advice from Major Bunbury. There was a\ncheck or two, when she was aware of puffing horses snatching their wind,\nand flushed riders, telling each other that it was a great run, and then\nagain the brown country flowing past her, and the unfailing guile of\nIsabella.\n\nIt was an hour and a half before Glasgow, dropping down into a road from\nthe top of a heathery bank, found the hounds at fault on the edge of a\nwide and famished expanse, half marsh, half bog. They seemed beaten and\nspiritless; some were already sitting idle and panting on their\nhaunches, and one of the younger ones was baying at a little bare-legged\ngirl, who was uttering lamentable cries at finding herself in the middle\nof the pack. She and the few starveling cattle she was tending were the\nonly living creatures in sight. It was a flat and inexplicable\nconclusion, but it was final beyond all ingenuity of casting.\n\nIt was a twelve-mile ride home for Slaney. She turned Isabella\u2019s head\nalmost immediately, and started at a walk, while the heat and\nenthusiasm died slowly away, and to-morrow lay as flat and cold before\nher as the marsh at her side. She was soon out of sight and hearing of\nthe group on the road, and passed on through the loneliness of the\nbarren hills, a tired figure on a tired horse, forgotten by all. So it\nwas that she saw herself, with that acute perception of the gloom of the\nposition that is with some natures the preliminary to tears.\n\n\u201cWhat happened to Slaney Morris?\u201d said Lady Susan to Glasgow, an hour\nlater, as she rode home with him. \u201cShe vanished like the fox. Is _she_ a\nwitch, too? I think she must be to have got that old crock along as she\ndid.\u201d\n\n\u201cMajor Bunbury will tell you all about her,\u201d replied Glasgow, not\nwithout interest in the manner in which the information would be\nreceived. \u201cI saw him catch her up before she had gone half-a-mile.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, the wily and dissolute old Bunny,\u201d exclaimed Lady Susan, in high\namusement. \u201cWon\u2019t he hear about it from me! I\u2019m simply screaming for a\ncigarette,\u201d she went on, \u201cand Hughie has my case in his pocket, and he\u2019s\nmiles behind--oh, thanks!\u201d She took one from Glasgow\u2019s case, and lit it\nin the fresh breeze with practised ease.\n\n\u201cI suppose Hughie\u2019s leg must have been bad again to-day,\u201d she said,\nrather awkwardly, as they moved on again. Glasgow stroked his moustache\nand looked the other way, with a tact sufficiently ostentatious to\nimpress Lady Susan.\n\n\u201cI saw him come out of the covert over a two-foot wall,\u201d Hugh\u2019s wife\nwent on, \u201cand he had no more cling than a toy.\u201d She paused again, and\nGlasgow still was silent. \u201cYou saw him at that fence where I asked him\nfor a lead,\u201d she said, with some genuine hesitation. \u201cWhat do you think\nwas wrong with him?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t suppose you can imagine what it feels like to lose your nerve,\nLady Susan,\u201d said Glasgow slowly.\n\nShe took her cigarette out of her mouth.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve been horribly afraid it was that,\u201d she said, in a low voice, and\ntheir eyes met in a fellowship in which Hugh could never have a part.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\n\nTaken from an architectural point of view there was nothing to be said\nfor French\u2019s Court. It belonged to the race of stone boxes, with\ntightly-fitting lids, that were built in Ireland a hundred years ago,\nthe greater box or the less, according to the circumstances of the\nbuilder, and it was of as Presbyterian a gauntness as its tribe.\nContrary, however, to the rule which ordained that the stone box should,\nas far as possible, face north and east, French\u2019s Court, with its ranks\nof high windows, looked out into the sunset across a great plain of\nwestern ocean. From the edge of the long bare terrace in front of the\nhouse, the grass-lands sloped suavely between plantations to the sea,\nwhere Atlantic rollers charged and volleyed in stubborn fastnesses of\ncliff. The low hills behind the house were clothed with woods, brown and\ngrey now in the mute suspense of January, touched here and there with\norange where last year\u2019s beech leaves clung like a stain of rust.\n\nIt was a big outlook, and the owner of French\u2019s Court was a very small\nincident of the foreground, as he stood on the terrace and watched the\nfishing-boats creeping out in the raw, grey calm to the solitudes beyond\nthe horizon. A portmanteau and a gun-case stood on the steps of the hall\ndoor, and a brown retriever was moving nervously round the gun-case,\nhurrying from it now and again to thrust her curly head into Hugh\u2019s\nhand, and beseech him with her amber eyes not to leave her behind. Every\ndog believed in Hugh, and told him so by the varied and untiring dog\nmethods, but now, with that restless and aching reference of all things\nto one subject, Hugh gave his hand to the innocent homage with the\nfeeling that every one except his dog had found him out. His wife knew\nit, Bunbury knew it, he writhed under their tact when they avoided all\ndiscussion of his part in the run that the Silver Fox had given them; he\ndetected with agony the consideration that prompted Lady Susan\u2019s gallant\nefforts to talk on subjects unconnected with horses. He could have found\nit in his heart to swear at her and tell her she need not take so much\ntrouble; he would have liked to quarrel with Bunbury and show him which\nwas the pluckier man; he dwelt on the thought with pitiful, childish\nintensity, and drove his heel into the gravel, half knowing himself to\nbe pitiful and childish.\n\nThere are junctures in a life when deficiency of intellect may\ndisastrously alter the moral balance, and the smaller mind may have need\nof supreme and heroic effort to attain the philosophy or even the sanity\nthat are easy to stronger intelligences. All Hugh\u2019s native good-feeling\nwas not enough to avail him when he remembered his wife\u2019s figure up\nagainst the sky on the top of the stone-faced bank, while he turned and\nmade for the byways and highways that had been his portion throughout\nthe day. Passionate admiration, turning to passionate jealousy of her\nflawless courage, and self-contempt, and knowledge that his eyes would\nnever again meet hers without consciousness of failure; all these\nbecause a good little average man had but two ideas in his life, and\nwhen one was taken from him, the other sickened like a poisoned thing.\n\nThe slow beat of a horse\u2019s hoofs became audible on the avenue, and a\nsombre vehicle, that was half brougham and half cab, emerged from the\ntrees into the open. Its coachman had a long red beard, a frieze coat,\nand a hat with a silver cord round it; the horse was white and shaggy,\nthe wheels of the brougham turned in as if it were bandy-legged. Hugh\nrecognized the equipage of his Uncle Charles, and stationed himself at\nthe hall door to receive it.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s awfully good of you to come, Slaney,\u201d he said, with an effort at\nhis wonted geniality. \u201cSuch short notice too. I didn\u2019t know that I was\ngoing to this shoot till I got in from hunting the day before\nyesterday.\u201d\n\nHe could remember, as he spoke, the mountain stream by which, when\nriding home, he had made up his mind to go, while the steady patter of\nthe hounds\u2019 paws sounded behind him on the wet road, and the honest\nhound faces that he was beginning to hate looked up at him from time to\ntime.\n\nSlaney and he found the drawing-room empty of all but a smell of\ncigarettes, and pursuing a fresh trail of it to the smoking-room, found\nLady Susan sitting with a cigarette in her shapely mouth, and in front\nof her a mandoline, from which she was plucking a shrill and agueish\nchatter of melody, representing a waltz. A grey poodle lay at her feet,\nwith his moustached muzzle buried in the fur rug, and his eyes rolling\npurgatorially upward in the forbidden longing to lift up his voice and\nhowl an accompaniment to the tune. Major Bunbury was reading a newspaper\nwith that air of serving his country that belongs to men when they read\npapers. No woman can hope to read the _Times_ as though it were a\nprofession; it is a masculine gift, akin to that of dining.\n\n\u201cOh, it\u2019s only Slaney!\u201d exclaimed Lady Susan. \u201cWe bolted in here when we\nsaw the white horse. We thought it was the parson. Well, you\u2019re very\ngood to come, dear, and it\u2019s very nice to have you.\u201d She kissed Slaney\nbriskly on both cheeks, conveying a mingled flavour of smart clothes,\ntobacco, and careless friendliness. \u201cHughie could never have gone away\nand left Bunny and me here together for a week, you know! It would have\nbeen hideously improper, wouldn\u2019t it? Uncle Charles would have had three\nfits on the spot, wouldn\u2019t he?\u201d She stationed herself on the arm of\nMajor Bunbury\u2019s chair, and put her elbow on his shoulder.\n\nSlaney realized that of the whole party she alone felt the proceeding to\nbe unusual, yet Major Bunbury did not seem to appreciate it.\n\n\u201cWell, I\u2019m off, anyhow,\u201d said Hugh. \u201cMake them look after you, Slaney.\nIf Glasgow wants to know anything more about the next meet or stopping\nthe earths, or anything, Bunbury, Dan can tell him.\u201d In spite of\nhimself, his voice stiffened till all the good-fellowship was gone from\nit. \u201cWell, good-bye, everybody.\u201d\n\nHe wondered whether his wife would come out to see him off, but he could\nnot ask her. She got up and came to the door, and stood leaning against\nit as he passed out. She was not quite sufficiently feminine to discern\nthat, in spite of his unprepossessing manner, and bald brevity of\nfarewell, he hated going away from her, and he went down the passage\nunaccompanied except by his dog.\n\n\u201cI think Hughie\u2019s got influenza, or liver, or something,\u201d remarked Lady\nSusan, returning to the mandoline, \u201che\u2019s awfully grumpy.\u201d\n\nBunbury got up without answering, and followed his host to the hall\ndoor.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\n\nMr. Glasgow made no difficulty about hunting the hounds during Hugh\u2019s\nabsence. The office was very much to his taste, and its obligations\nfitted in satisfactorily with his inclinations. These he summarized with\na fine brevity. He promised himself that he would wipe French\u2019s eye; his\nexact motive for doing so he did not attempt to define. He calculated\nthat he would have four days of office before Hugh returned. Four days\nonly! The inequality of things! he thought, with an impatient sigh,\ngathering up a bundle of highly unsatisfactory letters, that he had\nreceived that morning, and slamming the lid of his desk down on them.\n\nFortune favoured him. The weather was perfect, from a hunting point of\nview, there never was better scent, and the foxes ran the way they were\nwanted. \u201cBedad,\u201d said Danny-O, \u201cif I had a red herrin\u2019 in a halther I\ncouldn\u2019t make a nater line than thimselves.\u201d There were long jogs to the\nmeets through the pleasant soft weather, when Lady Susan rode at the\nhead of her husband\u2019s hounds with the acting master, while Slaney and\nBunbury followed old Danny at their heels. Once or twice they left off\ntwelve or fourteen miles from home, and a friendship can progress\nmarvellously in the slow return in the twilight, with the golden link of\na day\u2019s enjoyment, and the easy snatches of talk and silence of a\n_t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate_ on horseback.\n\nIt had become a custom that Glasgow should dine at French\u2019s Court on\nhunting days, and it was on the third of these occasions that a letter\nfrom Hugh arrived, saying that he was prolonging his visit for a few\nmore days. The post had been brought in while dessert was in progress.\nLady Susan leaned back in her chair with folded arms. They were white\narms, and had that composure about them that belongs to arms accustomed\nfrom their infancy to emerge from the latest variety of sleeve.\n\n\u201cHughie says that we\u2019re bound to go to this show to-night, and he\u2019s\nthanking his stars he\u2019s out of it, the little beast!\u201d she remarked\npresently. \u201cWhat sort of thing will they do, Slaney? You know all about\n\u2019em, I suppose. I never went to a parochial hall in my life. Will they\nsing the Doxology? I never can remember exactly what the Doxology is.\nOh, I say, Bunny, shall you ever forget that night we dined with old\nLady Pemberton, when she wanted her pet Bishop to say grace, and she\nleaned over and told him in her awful solemn old way to say \u2018God save\nthe Queen\u2019!\u201d Lady Susan laughed her loud short laugh, and looked across\nthe round table at Major Bunbury.\n\nGlasgow, sitting beside her, caught at that passing flash of her glance\nthat was intended for him specially, and replied to it with an intimacy\nthat startled Slaney. His face was pale, and had the tired look that\ncomes with mental rather than physical fatigue, but the crisp tingle of\nthe champagne had given its inimitable fillip; the excellence of the\ndinner had brought him into charity with all men--even with his Irish\nworkmen--and the warm luxury and charm of the surroundings had the\neffect of a perfume whose dizzy fragrance can steep mind and body in\nrepose. The anxieties that he had to bear alone, the reverses that hit\nhim harder than he dared admit, slept in this atmosphere of ease.\n\u201cLovely Thais\u201d sat beside him, and the gods had considerately prolonged\nthe absence of her husband. Even Slaney, who might at one time have\ncomplicated the situation, now fell into her place in the general\nsentiment of repose, and made a pleasant background of literary\nintelligence and perceptiveness. He remembered only as a transient\ncaprice the moment, unforgetable for her, that had given her life its\nfirst touch of passion. He finished his glass of burgundy, and took a\ncigarette from the silver box that his hostess pushed towards him.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ll play b\u00e9zique in the \u2019bus,\u201d pursued Lady Susan; \u201cwe couldn\u2019t\npossibly talk for six miles. I should go to sleep.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, heavens, not more cards!\u201d groaned Bunbury. \u201cDo you know, Miss\nMorris, that she made me play rubicon b\u00e9zique with her for three hours\non end this afternoon. I\u2019d hardly got my boots off when she sent William\nto hurry me down. I wish she\u2019d teach William to play with her.\u201d\n\n\u201cI used to play \u2018Spoilt Five\u2019 with the yard boys when I was a child,\u201d\nsaid Slaney. \u201cI never aspired to any one as grand as William. We used to\nplay secretly in an old loose box, and the cards were so black that we\nonly knew them by private marks on their backs.\u201d\n\nHer eyes were clear and half shy, like a boy\u2019s. Bunbury looked at her\ndelicate, clever hand, and tried to imagine it holding the grimy cards,\nand wondered how it was that so many impossible things were possible in\nIreland.\n\nThe concert in the Parochial Hall at Letter Kyle was neither more nor\nless than such entertainments are wont to be. Lady Susan, in her\ngorgeous _sortie-de-bal_, sat in the front row and carried on a\nconversation with Mr. Glasgow that, thanks to the vigour of her lungs,\nwas quite unhampered by the efforts of the performers, and was only\ninterrupted when some achievement of Letter Kyle millinery stupefied her\ninto a moment of silence. Slaney was inured to parochial concerts. It\nwas beside her that Glasgow had sat at the last of them, not so many\nmonths ago. She remembered how angry Uncle Charles had been because they\nlaughed when the school-master\u2019s wife had tranquilly omitted the top\nnote in \u201cThe Lost Chord\u201d as being beyond her compass. To-night she felt\nas though a wall had been built between her and the founts of laughter.\n\nWeighted by encores, the dismal programme wore on, and it was eleven\no\u2019clock before the French\u2019s Court party could escape from the long\nincarceration in hot air, winnowed by draughts that were heavy with hair\noil. Slaney leaned back in the corner of the \u2019bus, and the darkness of\nthe heart that she had been striving with fell upon her like a tangible\nthing. In spite of hot-water tins and a vast fur rug the cold breath of\na foggy night made itself felt. The faces of the four occupants of the\n\u2019bus glimmered white as the glimmer of the windows. Glasgow was sitting\nbeside Slaney, and some feeling blended of compunction and of desire to\nretain a captive, made him try to involve her in the desultory talk. She\ntasted a certain joyless gratification in ignoring him. The road was\nvery dark as they drove through a wood, and the glimmer of Slaney\u2019s face\nwas almost lost when Glasgow, determined to remind her of the kiss that\nhad so lightly come and gone between the firelight and the moonlight,\nslid his hand along the rug, and took hers with confident tenderness.\nIt was gone from him in a moment, and Slaney, with that level politeness\nof voice that is the distilled essence of a perfected anger, was telling\nLady Susan that her head ached, and that she would like to sit by the\ndoor.\n\nLady Susan changed places with her, and presently fell to arranging,\nwith Mr. Glasgow, the details of an expedition up the new railway line\nin a cattle-truck. Their voices sank gradually to that level that\nindicates to an outside world that it is superfluous. What they said\nseemed to be wholly trivial, and flagrant only in aridness; yet the low\nvoices, half-lost in the noise of the wheels, had a quality that drove\nBunbury and Slaney into a conversation lame with consciousness of what\nit tried to ignore.\n\nGlasgow\u2019s dog-cart was waiting for him at French\u2019s Court, and it waited\nlong before the supper was over, at which Lady Susan made amends for her\nphilanthropy in cigarettes and hock and seltzer. When the door at\nlength opened to let the guest out into the fog, Lady Susan was near it,\ntall and resplendent, with the fur of her glistening silk wrap clinging\nround her white neck. The door closed, and as she turned away she saw\nsomething white under its flap.\n\n\u201cI say, it\u2019s a letter,\u201d she exclaimed, stooping for it, \u201csome one must\nhave dropped it, and it caught under the door. Why, it\u2019s for\nHughie--looks like a washerwoman\u2019s bill. Funny way of sending it in,\nisn\u2019t it?\u201d she yawned hugely; \u201cwell, it will keep, anyhow. Let\u2019s go to\nbed; good-night, my dears.\u201d She flung the letter on a table and rustled\nup-stairs.\n\nSlaney was in the habit of saying her prayers. She knelt down and put\nher head into the soft cushion of the chair, conscious of little except\nthat she had flung down the burden of another day. She remained for a\nlong time on her knees, with a blank, spent mind, soothed in some dull\nway by the suggestions of her attitude, till a slight sound on the\nterrace, under her open window, made her lift her head and listen.\n\nThe sound came and went, and Slaney was roused to put aside the curtains\nand look down. There was nothing to be seen but the fog that had risen\nout of the sea and settled on the land, with frost and moonlight blended\nin its whiteness; all the world seemed arrested and tranced, all the air\nchanged with its cold and mysterious presence.\n\n\u201cIt was a rabbit,\u201d she said to herself, and instantly, as if to\ncontradict her, a black-and-grey collie passed quickly under the window,\nwith its nose down as if running a trail.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\n\n\nThe ring of the trowel travelled far on the wind across the heather, a\nvoice of civilization, saying pertinent, unhesitating things to a\ncountry where all was loose, and limitless, and inexact. Up here, by the\nshores of Lough Turc, people had, from all ages, told the time by the\nsun, and half-an-hour either way made no difference to any one;\nnow--most wondrous of all impossibilities--the winter sunrise was daily\nheralded by the steely shriek of an engine whirling truckloads of men to\ntheir work across the dark and dumb bog-lands. The trout in the lakes no\nlonger glided to safety at the recurrence of the strange tremor and\nclatter that accompanied the twilights, the wild duck no longer\nsplashed into wing along the water\u2019s surface, and the people scattered\namong the hillsides already counted as their chiefest landmark the red\ngable of the new railway-station.\n\nEvery morning saw a villageful of men shot into it; bricklayers working\nhigh up in the gable, stone-cutters dressing limestone blocks with\ninfinite chip and clink, workmen shovelling gravel, and over all the\nvoice of the ganger arising at intervals in earnest, profuse profanity.\nThe Dublin artisans worked in silence, except when one or other trolled\nforth one of the ditties of his class--genteel romance, with a waltz\nrefrain, or obscure vulgarity of the three-penny music-hall, yet\nrepresenting to the singer the songs of Zion in a strange land; while\nthe local gang used every chance of proximity to carry on a low growl of\nconversation. Whether it was the party of twenty whose picks and spades\nwere gradually levelling and filling the unfinished platform, or the two\nwhose voices ascended in Irish from the depths of the well that they\nwere sinking, the general topic was the same, and was one that\nintimately concerned Mr. Glasgow.\n\n\u201cJim Mulloy\u2019s brother told me he seen the paymasther \u2019ere yestherday in\nLetther Kyle,\u201d said a withered little man, who was mixing mortar with\nextraordinary deliberation. \u201cHe was comin\u2019 out o\u2019 the bank, an\u2019 he\nhavin\u2019 the brown bag with him.\u201d\n\n\u201cMaybe it\u2019s little chance oursel\u2019 has of it, whether or no,\u201d responded\nhis satellite, a red-faced youth, whose occupation of eternally shaking\nsand through a sieve might well foster pessimism. \u201cDon\u2019t ye know well\nthim isn\u2019t workin\u2019 for nothin\u2019\u201d--indicating the bricklayers on the\ngable, and the portly and prosperous stonemasons, chipping away in\nprofessional silence. \u201cShort thim fellows\u2019d be leggin\u2019 it away to Dublin\nif they wasn\u2019t gettin\u2019 their pay; an\u2019 d----d well Glasgow knows it\u2019s\nthe likes of us must be waitin\u2019 on him!\u201d\n\nThe man who was supplying the sand tilted his barrow up on end and\nleaned on the handles, secure in the knowledge that the ganger was\nengaged at the other side of the station in raining down expletives upon\nthe heads of the sinkers of the well.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s what they\u2019re sayin\u2019 beyond,\u201d he remarked, jerking his head in the\ndirection of the men working at the platform, \u201cthat what has him\ndesthroyed is the bog of Tully. Eight months now they\u2019re sthrivin\u2019 to\nfill that spot.\u201d\n\n\u201cAn\u2019 if they were eight months more,\u201d said the man who was mixing the\nmortar, \u201cthey\u2019ll not fill it.\u201d He took off the tin lid of his pipe and\nstirred up its embers with a horny fore-finger. \u201cBetther for him not to\nbe intherfarin\u2019 with the likes o\u2019 that place.\u201d\n\nThe pessimist with the sieve laughed with the superiority of youth, and\nof a reader of the _Daily Independent_.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s wather runnin\u2019 undher the ground there in every place,\u201d went on\nthe same speaker, \u201cme father knew that well--sure the bog itsel\u2019 is\nonly sittin\u2019 on it. There\u2019s holes up in Cahirdreen that\u2019s sixty feet\ndeep, and wather runnin\u2019 in the bottom o\u2019 them. \u2019Tis out undher Tully\nthat wather goes. Sure there was a man had a grand heifer--God knows\nye\u2019d sooner be lookin\u2019 at her than atin\u2019 yer dinner--she fell down in\none o\u2019 them holes, and went away undher the ground with the wather. As\nsure as I\u2019m alive, they heard her screeching up through the bog!\u201d\n\nThe reader of the _Independent_ was half-staggered, and the ganger, who\nhad advanced upon the party with the quietness of a dangerous bull, here\nbroke upon the conversation in gross and fervid oratory.\n\n\u201cThey\u2019re gettin\u2019 it in style down there,\u201d said one of the platform\nparty. \u201cBy damn, if he comes to talkin\u2019 to me, I\u2019ll throw down the\nshovel and ax him where is me three weeks\u2019 wages!\u201d\n\n\u201cMaybe ye will, Mortheen,\u201d rejoined his next-door neighbour, \u201can\u2019 maybe\nthis time next week ye\u2019ll be afther him axing him to take ye back.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs it _him_?\u201d replied the undaunted Mortheen; \u201clittle I\u2019d think of\nbreaking his snout for him, or Glasgow\u2019s ayther!\u201d\n\nAs he spoke, the whistle of an engine, thinned by distance, made itself\nheard, and away on the horizon the steam cloud blossomed like a silver\nflower against the sunny sky.\n\nWhen the engine and its accompanying brake-van drew up at the station,\nGlasgow\u2019s eye could discover no flaw in the exemplary and dead silent\nindustry that prevailed. The shovelfuls flung by Mortheen were heavier\nand more frequent than those of his fellows, and even the spectacle of\nLady Susan emerging in sables from the van and passing among the buckets\nand heaps of lime, did not seem to be noticed by so much as the lift of\nan eyelid. It was almost one o\u2019clock, and the ganger, transformed into\nan official of submissive urbanity, sounded his whistle for the\ndinner-hour. The clatter of tools died out in the space of two seconds,\nand the men, swinging themselves into their coats, straggled out into\nthe road, slouching, rolling, hitching, and apparently untouched by the\ndesire of the ordinary human heart to keep step.\n\nTheir employer\u2019s picnic-party was already established in the\nnewly-roofed kitchen of the new station, by a fire of chips and bits of\nplank. A luncheon-basket stood on a carpenter\u2019s bench, a\nchampagne-bottle on the window-sill, and Lady Susan and Slaney were\nsitting on boxes by the fire, eating game pie. Lady Susan had violets in\nher toque, and possessed more strikingly than usual that air of being\nvery handsome that is not always given to handsome people. Behind her\nthe empty window framed a gaunt mountain peak, a lake that frittered a\nmyriad sparkles from its wealth of restless silver, and the grey and\nfaint purple of the naked wood beyond it. It seemed too great a\nbackground for her powdered cheek and her upward glances at her host.\n\n\u201cHow far do you want us to walk?\u201d she said, looking over her shoulder at\nthe view, \u201call the way to that wood there? How silly of you to say the\nbikes would be no use!\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t dispute the fact that they would have been of use to you and\nMajor Bunbury,\u201d replied her host, cutting the wires of the second bottle\nof champagne.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s so contemptible of you not to learn the bike,\u201d she went on, with a\nmanner half discontented, half brusque. \u201cIt\u2019s all prejudice.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m beginning to cultivate prejudice,\u201d said Glasgow, retaining the cork\nwith skill, \u201cit\u2019s so respectable. Churchwardens and generals and heads\nof departments are always prejudiced.\u201d\n\n\u201cI didn\u2019t know that you were so wonderfully addicted to respectability,\u201d\nsaid Lady Susan, with a laugh and a look that made Slaney feel rather\nhot--\u201csince when, may I ask?\u201d Lady Susan was too careless and too\nlittle disposed for the toils of finesse to foster a flirtation for its\nown sake; when she did find a sufficing motive, these same qualities\ncreated a startling directness of method.\n\n\u201cSince when?\u201d repeated Glasgow. \u201cOh, since I took to church-going, I\nsuppose. Perhaps Miss Morris could tell you!\u201d\n\nSlaney had become accustomed to these morsels flung to the memory of a\npast, but they never failed to remind her of the moment when she had\nplaced herself for ever at a disadvantage.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m not a very good authority,\u201d she said, with a smile as cold as the\nJanuary wind; \u201cUncle Charles has a better memory for things connected\nwith church-going.\u201d\n\nThe intention to be unresponsive often makes itself felt more\ndisagreeably than a repartee. It annoyed Glasgow, even while he set it\ndown as an indirect tribute to his desertion.\n\n\u201cI refuse to be described as a thing connected with church-going,\u201d he\nsaid, looking straight at her and laughing; \u201cI thought I had other\nassociations.\u201d\n\nMajor Bunbury looked up quickly, not at Glasgow, but at Slaney. Her\nflushed silence was obvious enough for any one, except Lady Susan, who\nmerely supposed that champagne at luncheon was having its almost\ninevitable result on the complexion. Perhaps it was by contrast that\nGlasgow\u2019s habitual pallor seemed pastiness, and his easy manner\nsomething that struck Major Bunbury as being like bad form.\n\n\u201cI say,\u201d remarked Lady Susan, \u201cwhen are we to go on and see this\nwonderful waterfall, or whatever it is? Where are the cigarettes? Let\u2019s\nlight up before we start.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think you\u2019d better not,\u201d said Glasgow, \u201cthe men will be back\ndirectly.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, what do they matter?\u201d\n\n\u201cI think you\u2019d better not,\u201d he repeated, in that intimate tone that\nseemed so uncalled for.\n\nLady Susan put up her eyebrows with an expression of petulant inquiry,\nand something as near a pout as was possible for a person not versed in\nthe habit, but she shut her cigarette-case. Major Bunbury thought he had\nnever seen her look so foolish.\n\n\u201cIs she going to lose her head about him?\u201d was the question that was\nsuddenly driven in upon him. Until to-day, he thought she was merely\noccupying idleness and exhibiting indifferent taste.\n\nHe and Slaney walked behind her and Glasgow along the muddy road, in\nthat double _t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate_ now become inevitable; the wind blew cold and\nsweet off the lake and off the bog--cold, and sweet, and inimitably\nIrish, like Slaney herself, as Major Bunbury was at this moment capable\nof expressing it, if he had known that he was making the comparison. His\nmind had unconsciously stored up many such impressions of her, to what\nend it had not occurred to him to inquire. The road crossed a\ntrout-stream, and by the bridge Glasgow and Lady Susan turned off and\nbegan to follow the bank of the little river through a stunted and\nintricate wood. In the track by which they made their way it was not\npossible to walk side by side; Bunbury went first, sometimes holding\nback a branch, sometimes giving her his hand when the rocks of the river\nbrink thrust their slippery shoulders across the way. They spoke little,\nand by the gift of imaginative sympathy that was hers for those who\ninterested her, she knew that his silence was vexed with misgiving about\nLady Susan.\n\nThe river was brimming full, and, as it raced, the black water and the\ncold froth washed in deep eddies between the rocks; the sunlit bank\nopposite was red with withered bracken and sedge; the soft booming of a\nwaterfall came to the ear. Passing round the curve they saw the thick\nand creamy column of water plunge from its edge of low crag to its ruin\namong the boulders; above it two or three battered fir-trees stood on\nthe high ground, grey and straight and rigid beside the lavish rush and\nconfusion.\n\nLady Susan was leaning against one of the fir-trees, smoking her\ncigarette, and looking fixedly and dreamily at the water; Glasgow, with\nher fur-lined coat on his arm, was standing very close to her, looking\nas if he had said something to which she had not as yet replied. She did\nnot move when Slaney and Bunbury joined them, and was unaffectedly\nuninterested in general conversation. Slaney had never thought her so\nhandsome; her eyes seemed to look out of her heart and into a remote\nplace unseen of others, instead of summing up things around her with her\nwonted practical glance.\n\nIt was against all theories of woman-kind, yet the fact remained that\nSlaney liked Lady Susan.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\n\nThe party returned to the station by different ways, that chosen by\nSlaney and Bunbury involving a good deal of wandering by dark and\nintricate paths in the hollow of the wood before the high road again was\nreached. The other half of the picnic was not in sight; and when Slaney\nand her companion arrived at the station, the engine and brake van, in\nwhich they had come, had disappeared, and in their place was another\nengine that had come up the line with a train of trucks. It was a small\nand very dirty engine, the driver\u2019s white jumper was as grimy as his\nface, and coal-dust and oil had gone hand-in-hand to effect a general\nand thorough defilement.\n\nThe ganger explained the position respect-fully. Mr. Glasgow had found\nthat he was obliged to catch the mail train for Dublin, and he and the\nlady had started a quarter of an hour before; he had ordered the\nballast-engine to wait for Major Bunbury.\n\nSlaney recovered herself on the verge of looking aghast. Major Bunbury\nkept his eyes away from the neighbourhood of hers, and with almost\nexcessive carelessness made inquiries as to the hour at which the mail\ntrain was due at Letter Kyle. It appeared that there remained forty-five\nminutes before it arrived there, and that the usual time required by the\nballast-engine for the distance was an hour and a quarter. Possibilities\nspread and soaked coldly through Slaney\u2019s mind, like suddenly spilt\nwater. Situations in novels that she had read lent their smooth\nprobability to the raw and disjointed circumstance; she found herself\nwondering that it was all so horribly painful, so ugly, so devoid of\nsubtle psychological interest and large bearing; not realizing that in\nactual life feeling is born first, help-less as a blind puppy, and\nphilosophy is not born at all, but is built, with infinite\nself-consciousness.\n\nShe was already on the engine--it was moving; she was holding on to an\niron rail as she stood, and was not unaware that it was spoiling her\ngloves. Major Bunbury\u2019s conversation with the engine-driver had ended\nwith an almost imperceptible glide of the latter\u2019s hand into his\ntrousers pocket, and Major Bunbury himself was standing beside Slaney in\nthe cramped space available for them, looking preternaturally cheerful\nand unaffected. He possessed that gift of trivial observation that is\nthe parent of tact and is one of the rarest of male attributes. It can\nbe formidable, it can also be attractive beyond most other things. He\nhardly looked at Slaney, who was gazing straight ahead through the\nbull\u2019s-eye windows, but he knew that what she saw was not so much the\nwide tumbling waste of moor with its skirting mountains, as the\ncreations of her own unsophisticated sus-picion. The pace of the engine\nincreased momently, from a tremulous glide to a clattering rush; every\nmovement of the driver\u2019s hand as he heightened the speed was answered by\na forward start, like a powerful horse touched with the spur--unhampered\nby carriage or tender it raced and swung. Slaney held on with both\nhands, while the wind from the open sides encircled and buffeted her,\nardent with heat snatched from the engine fire, bitter with the frost\nthat had turned the bog drain into mirrors for the keen colours of a\nwinter sunset. There was not as yet a signal worked on the line; they\nmust trust to eyesight and pluck for the safety of an engine driven at\nnearly its best speed; and the strident shriek tore the air incessantly,\nand each curve or cutting meant a slackening and an instant of suspense\nbefore the long vista opened clear, and they were away again with that\nliving bound that thrilled Slaney\u2019s unaccustomed heart as only pace can\nthrill. She began to understand that they were racing against time and\nluck to intercept--what? Could it be to foil the insane impulse of a\nwoman who had lost her head in the terrible discovery that she had a\nheart?\n\nThe miles fleeted past, until the engine and its pent scream burst forth\nfrom the clanging walls of a rock cutting, and skirting a lake, entered\non the great brown plain of Tully bog. A double line of drains, fed by\ninnumerable cuts, made a herring-bone pattern on either side; the spongy\ngravel sprang beneath the strides of the engine; the water in the drains\nflapped and washed in sympathy against its peat walls. It seemed a\nsingular audacity of engineering to force a line of rails across such a\nmorass. Three miles away the heights of Cahirdreen were dark in the\nevening sky; recognizing them, Slaney felt the influence of an evil fate\ncross her keen excitement like a cold streak--like a shiver across the\nheat of fever. The driver looked at his watch, and, with one hand on the\nbrake, added the last possible five miles an hour to the pace. The\nengine seemed to be swallowing the endless strip of line that flowed\ninto its clutch; the motion felt like sliding on a wire, without effort\nor possibility of stopping. Thundering along an imperceptible curve,\nthey neared the hill, with its fir-trees ranged in tall and quiet ranks\nin the twilight. At a distance of perhaps two hundred yards, the cutting\nopened before them as they rounded the bend, and all four uttered a\nsimultaneous exclamation. The V-shaped cleft held a dark obstruction.\n\nInstantly, with a jar and a jerk, the brakes were on at their full\npower, and Slaney was leaning back as if to hold off the shock that was\nalready sending shoots of anticipation through her feet and fingers.\nShouts, and the whistling of another engine came through the noise, the\nbrakes bit, and shoved, and clung. Somewhere in the jolting, deafening\nseconds an arm came strongly round Slaney\u2019s waist, and drew her towards\nthe footboard. She understood that if the worst came she was to jump\nwith Major Bunbury; then another hand caught her skirt, and pulled her\nback. She recognized the driver\u2019s filthy white sleeve, and at the same\nmoment some one shouted that they were safe. Squeaking, and grinding,\nand skidding, the engine was fought to a standstill, while yet ten yards\nseparated it from the buffers of the brake van in which Lady Susan and\nGlasgow had started an hour before. Fifty yards further on, the line was\nblocked by a great pile of gravel and rock, newly fallen from the side\nof the cutting.\n\nLady Susan and Glasgow were there; her face looked wild and white, and\nas she came to Slaney, she seemed to struggle to speak. It was a moment\nof extremes and exaggeration in feeling. Slaney felt that two\nindependent currents of supreme and fore-ordained evil had made their\nonslaught, and, in meeting, had neutralized each other.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\n\nMr. Glasgow\u2019s brown hunter, Solomon, had not lived his thirteen years in\nvain. When he was led out into the yard one idle forenoon, and was there\nwalked and trotted up and down in front of his owner and two strange men\nin tight trousers, and when, later, one of the strange men, who had the\nknowledgeable light fingers of a vet., passed his hand down his legs,\nand looked into his eyes, and pinched his throat, Solomon knew that it\nlooked like his fifth change of owners. Afterwards he was taken out and\ncantered in a field, and though he felt chilly and dull, he jumped a\ntrial bank with self-respect, and with the consciousness that he was\ngiving a lead to the chestnut, who did not understand the principle of\njumping in cold blood.\n\nHe was not mistaken in the purport of these things. Glasgow felt a pain\nabout his throat as he saw the old horse walk into his stall again. He\nhad not thought he would have minded so much. He stood by in the silence\nthat characterizes horse-dealing, while the chestnut underwent\nexamination, and looked round the yard at the miscellaneous collection\nof wreckage from his railway contract--the broken pumping-engine, the\nautomatic crossing-gates that would not work, the corrugated iron hut\nthat the men would not sleep in--and said to himself that the luck had\nbeen against him. It did not occur to him that he had shouldered his\ncompetitors out of the contract by a tender that left no margin for\nmistakes. Mr. Glasgow never made mistakes, but he had based his\nbrilliant and minute calculations on the theory that the cheap Irish\nlabour would accomplish as much in the day as the costly English, and\nthe fact that it had not done so was obviously beyond the sphere of\nrational calculation. In the long stable at the other side of the yard a\nheavy hoof was dealing sledge-hammer kicks to the stall, and Glasgow, as\nhe heard it, estimated what price the creditors would get for the big\ndray-horses that he had brought over from England for the railway work.\nWhen he thought of the value of the plant that he was going to leave\nbehind, he scarcely felt like a defaulter: there would be more than\nenough realized to pay the men, and the Railway Company could afford to\nlose. There remained to him his private means, the Argentine Republic,\nhis own considerable gifts as a civil engineer, and---- Would Lady Susan\nremain? He felt little doubt about that part of his future.\n\nMr. Andrew Murphy was offering him, in the accents of Tipperary, a\nhundred pounds for the two horses--seventy for the chestnut and thirty\nfor old Solomon--and he was holding out for a hundred and twenty with\nhis usual decision. If there were a weakness in his business dealings,\nit lay in his determination to be decisive at all points. The small and\ndeliberate methods of expediency were intolerable to him; he would\nrather do without bread than accept the half-loaf. Now, even while each\ntrivial episode was tinged with the reflected light of his future, and\nall were converging towards an immediate crisis, he held to his point,\nand had not Mr. Murphy known of an immediate customer for Solomon, the\nbargain might have ended untimely. As it was, the two horses changed\nhands at Mr. Glasgow\u2019s price, with the understanding that both could be\nhunted next day by their former owner. Mr. Glasgow insisted on this\npoint, and took all risks.\n\nWhen it was all over, and Mr. Murphy and the vet. had had\nwhiskies-and-sodas and gone away, Glasgow went back to his office and\ntook up again his task of burning and sorting papers. Being habitually\norderly in his habits, the work went steadily, and, to all appearance,\nwithout effort; yet, as the time went on, his pale face became jaded and\ngrey, and the lines about his mouth deepened.\n\nThe terrace at French\u2019s Court witnessed that afternoon the least\ndignified of earthly sights--the struggles of a lady-beginner on a\nbicycle. It was somewhat of a descent from the heroics of forty miles an\nhour on an engine, yet as Slaney, flushed and dishevelled, wobbled to\nher one-and-twentieth overthrow, the past and future were forgotten in\nthe ignoble excitements of the moment. Major Bunbury, himself in no mean\ncondition of heat, picked her up out of a holly-bush and started her\nagain; he had been doing the same thing for half-an-hour, but it had not\nseemed to pall. When the two-and-twentieth collapse had been safely\naccomplished, Slaney confessed to feeling somewhat shattered, and\nreturning to the hall, sank into a chair, with aching knees and hands\nseamed with gravel.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s nothing to what you\u2019ll feel like to-morrow,\u201d said Major Bunbury,\nencouragingly. \u201cYou rode into the pillar of the gate so _very_ hard last\ntime.\u201d He looked down at her from his position on the hearthrug, and\nthen glanced across to the dusky, comfortable corner where the piano\nwas. \u201cI wonder if you remember that you said you were too tired this\nmorning to play that Impromptu?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy hands were, and are, permanently hooked from holding on to the rail\non the engine,\u201d said Slaney, whose spirits had risen as surprisingly as\nher colour with her first experience on the bicycle, \u201cand no one with a\nproper sense of how things ought to be would have expected me to do\nanything but lie on the sofa and faint. Instead of which, I am asked to\nsit on a music-stool and humiliate myself by playing things that I don\u2019t\nknow.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think Susan looks more knocked out of time than you do,\u201d remarked\nBunbury, after one of those comfortable pauses that mark intimacy, \u201cand\nthey really had not so near a shave as we had. They weren\u2019t going\nanything like our pace when they saw that the cutting had fallen in.\u201d\nAnother pause. \u201cBy the way, did you--did you understand that I thought\nwe should have to jump, that time that I--that I put my arm round you?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, perfectly,\u201d said Slaney distantly, and blushed with fervour. \u201cMr.\nGlasgow did not seem to mind missing his train, after all,\u201d she went on,\nspeeding into the topic she most wished to avoid, as is frequently the\nfate of those who talk for the sake of changing the conversation.\n\n\u201cI believe that was all a mistake. Glasgow hadn\u2019t the slightest idea of\ngoing; he only wanted to see one of the directors who was travelling up\nby the mail,\u201d said Bunbury elaborately.\n\n\u201cSusan waited for us at the station till she was frozen,\u201d continued\nSlaney, taking her share in the apology. \u201cShe would have come on our\nengine only that it would have spoiled her box cloth coat.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you know where she is now?\u201d asked Bunbury, after another silence.\n\n\u201cShe said something about going to look for daffodils. I saw her going\nup the backway towards the woods some time ago.\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you too tired to walk up to meet her? You may choose between that\nand playing the Impromptu.\u201d\n\nThey went up the hill at the back of the house by a seldom-used avenue,\nwhere cart-wheels had made deep brown ruts in the grass, and the\nbordering oaks hung their branches low and unpruned; pale winter\npastures spread on either side, and the cattle were already moving\ndownwards towards their night\u2019s lodging. Yet the hint of coming spring\nwas in the lengthened afternoon; stiff-necked daffodil buds were\nbeginning to bend their heads and show the hoarded gold through the\njealous green, and thrushes were twining a net of song in the\nshrubberies below. It is in the days of February that the Irish air\nbegins again to breathe suggestion--no longer mere food for the lungs,\nit invades the heart, and bewilders the brain with griefs and hopes.\nEven to the dimming of the eye that smell of the fields entered into\nSlaney; with a new and strong understanding of herself she could have\nwept for the guileless egoist who had been Slaney Morris when last the\nFebruary winds blew sweet.\n\n\u201cHave you written that letter to say that you are not going home\nto-morrow?\u201d said Bunbury, as he held open the gate that admitted them\ninto the wood.\n\nHe had realized during his walk up across the pastures that days in\nwhich Slaney had no share would be strangely meaningless. Not being\nintrospective the discovery was sudden enough to set his blood beating\nand his heart instinctively aching. He knew that she could look forward\nto days without him as unconcernedly as she would look back to days with\nhim; she was self-sufficing, as the ideal ever seems to be the\nidealizer, and such as he had no portion beyond the opening of gates for\nher to pass through. Major Bunbury\u2019s elder sister must have faithfully\nfulfilled the mission of elder sisters, or else his natural estimation\nof himself was low.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d replied Slaney, with her eyes on the ground, \u201cafter all, I made up\nmy mind not to write.\u201d\n\n\u201cYour mind was made up the other way when you talked about it after\nbreakfast,\u201d said Bunbury, looking down at her as she flicked a fir-cone\naside with her stick. \u201cDo you generally change it every few hours?\u201d\n\n\u201cEmerson says that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds,\u201d replied\nSlaney, with a little sententious air that Bunbury found exasperatingly\ncharming.\n\n\u201cDoes Emerson say that Uncle Charles is a hobgoblin for small minds, and\ncould very well look after himself for another week?\u201d There was a\nresentment in Major Bunbury\u2019s voice that he did not try to conceal.\n\n\u201cHe says nothing of the sort. He might have said Uncle Charles was a\nDiocesan Nominator, only he forgot to,\u201d said Slaney, still preoccupied\nwith the carpet of pine-needles on which they were walking. \u201cBut as\nyou\u2019re not an Irishman,\u201d she went on, \u201cI suppose you don\u2019t even know\nwhat that is?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt seems to be a thing that requires a great deal of unnecessary\nattention, and can\u2019t take care of itself,\u201d said Bunbury gloomily.\n\n\u201cWell, you\u2019re quite wrong,\u201d replied Slaney, looking up with a laugh that\nwas shy and friendly, and a little conscious. She was not accustomed to\nfinding that her comings and goings were of importance to people like\nMajor Bunbury. \u201cIt\u2019s a most self-sufficing and useful thing. It goes\naway at intervals to elect clergymen for the Irish Church, and it sent\nover a note this afternoon to say I was not to go home for two or three\ndays.\u201d\n\nBunbury was quite silent for a few moments; then, while the pine-needle\ncarpet seemed to rise up under his feet, he took her ungloved right\nhand, and raised it, stick and all, to meet his face as he bent over it,\nlike a man stooping to drink. He kissed it, hurriedly and awkwardly, but\nin an instant the fine and slender fingers had escaped from his lips,\nand he stood by her, speechless and dizzy. In that moment of silence his\nheart opened and let in her dearness like a flood; before the next could\ndawn with its possibilities, a woman\u2019s voice broke out of the wood,\nthrough twilight barred with tree stems. It was so near, it was so\nwhetted with agony, so flung about with gusts of passion, that, for the\nmoment, oblivious of what had just passed, they stared at each other for\nthe space of a long-held breath, and were carried on towards it with\nthat instinct that drags every human being towards suffering. A smell of\nwood-smoke drifted lightly in the air; it strengthened as a bend of the\npath straightened before them, till they saw among the trees a group of\nmen, a fire of fir-branches crackling in a bed of red ember and white\nash, and down at the left side of the path a pond that glimmered darkly\nin a pale setting of sedgy grass. There was a punt on the pond, and\nboat-hooks and ropes were flung about. Glasgow was standing by, why or\nhow it did not occur to Slaney to inquire. There were several countrymen\nwhom she recognized, and all seemed silently intent on some central\ncatastrophe.\n\nThe woman\u2019s voice was unintelligible now, half-smothered and near the\nground, as if her mouth were laid against the grass. Two men stooped and\ntried to pull her to her feet. A red head appeared, swaying, as when, a\nmonth before, Maria Quin staggered through the drunken crowd while they\nclosed her father\u2019s coffin. Slaney saw now what it was that lay on the\nground beside her; the fixed sprawl of the limbs in the soaked clothing,\nthe discoloured cheek, torn by boat-hooks; it expressed with terrific\ncompleteness the hunted life, the lonely act of death that had attained\nsuch peace as this stillness might betoken.\n\nTom Quin\u2019s black-and-grey dog moved restlessly round the body of his\nmaster, sniffing closely at the face, trying to turn over with his nose\nthe rigid hand that still clutched a fragment of sodden reed, in that\ndumb distress and fear of death that animals must bear uncomforted.\nSlaney dragged her eyes from the engrossing horror of it, and in doing\nso met those of Lady Susan at the far side of the group; but nothing\nseemed strange to her now, not even the white fixity of Lady Susan\u2019s\nface, that told of a plucky woman strongly moved.\n\nAt that instant Maria Quin broke out of the group and confronted\nGlasgow, eyes and face and voice beyond all control or desire of it, and\nrepellent as human frenzy must inevitably be.\n\n\u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for the way you had him persecuted,\u201d she yelled, \u201che\nwouldn\u2019t be thrown out there on the grass undher yer feet. \u2019Twas _you_\nrefused him the money back and dhrew the curse on him till ye had him\nwandhering the counthry night and day like a wild goose. Couldn\u2019t\nannyone know the crayture\u2019s heart was broke whin he threw the scafflin\u2019\noff him and left it on the stone by the brink? Oh, God and His Mother!\nHe knew he couldn\u2019t dhrown if that was on him\u201d--she held up the\nscapulary that Quin, like most Irish Roman Catholics, wore round his\nneck, and shook it in Glasgow\u2019s face--\u201cand you to come walkin\u2019 through\nthe woods with yer lover, so quiet! That yersel\u2019s may be lookin\u2019 for a\nplace to die and be threw in a grave that won\u2019t be blessed!\u201d\n\nThere was a general stifled exclamation, and the man said audibly--\n\n\u201cThe Cross of Christ be between us and harm!\u201d One of the French\u2019s Court\nworkmen caught at Maria Quin\u2019s arm as if to silence her; another pulled\nhim away, telling him in Irish that the curse might fall on any one who\ninterfered with her.\n\nLady Susan passed quickly round the outside of the group and came\nstraight to Bunbury, her figure in its brilliant modernity accentuating\nthe sombreness of a tragedy of this archaic kind.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m going home,\u201d she said indistinctly, and walked past him; \u201cI feel\nrather queer from seeing that----\u201d Her voice failed her, and she put her\nhand to her eyes. Bunbury followed her without a word. It came home with\na pang to Slaney\u2019s heart that Lady Susan had turned to him, expecting no\nquarter from the girl.\n\nShe turned to follow them, but she had not gone more than a few yards\nwhen she heard a step behind her. Glasgow overtook her, and without\nspeaking began to walk beside her; he looked straight in front of him,\nand something about his movement and the carriage of his head told her\nthat he was entirely absorbed in hot white anger.\n\n\u201cI hope you are gratified at the result of encouraging superstition,\u201d he\nsaid at last, in a voice that told of the inward pressure of feeling.\n\n\u201cIt seems to have been more the result of discouraging it,\u201d she replied,\nwithout attempting to keep out of her voice the antagonism that was in\nher heart.\n\n\u201cIt would be simpler if you said at once that honest or sane people had\nbetter give up having any dealings with the Irish,\u201d he returned hotly.\n\n\u201cDo you mean English people? They certainly have not been eminently\nsuccessful so far.\u201d\n\nSlaney felt quite cool, and Glasgow wondered how he had ever found her\nattractive.\n\n\u201cAs you are a friend of these Quins,\u201d he said, holding his temper back,\nbut not his imperiousness, \u201cI think it would be as well if you advised\nthat woman to take care about what she says of me, as she may get\nherself into trouble.\u201d\n\nHe forgot for the moment the trouble that lay ahead of him; yet the\nstrong nervous excitement that fed his anger was due to the imminence\nof that trouble, forgotten or no.\n\n\u201cI think advice would be rather thrown away on her just now,\u201d replied\nSlaney, thinking of what lay by the pool, and of the wet torn face that\nthe dog smelt at; \u201ceven Irish people feel things sometimes.\u201d\n\nShe suddenly became aware of the spring of tears that lies at the back\nof a shock, and she bit her lip and drove her stick hard into the ground\nas she walked.\n\n\u201cI can only suppose then,\u201d he said, \u201cthat you don\u2019t object to hearing\nyour friends publicly libelled.\u201d\n\nHe held the gate of the wood open for her, and she walked through as\nstiff as a dart. She knew quite well what sentence of Maria Quin\u2019s it\nwas that was foremost on his ear, and it was intolerable that he should\ntake his stand beside Lady Susan. Her distrust of him had become so\ninvincible that she felt Lady Susan to be a bird in the snare of the\nfowler; she could not think of her as a confederate.\n\n\u201cCan\u2019t you realize,\u201d she said, at last, \u201cthat nothing I could say would\ndo any good now?\u201d\n\n\u201cI see,\u201d he sneered, while he sought among his cast-iron theories of\nwomen for something that should fit this abnormal one. \u201cYou mean that it\nis no use to hope that a woman will hold her tongue, whether it be to\nher own advantage or not!\u201d\n\nThe long-pent anger suddenly stirred in her, and with it the resolution\nthat had long lain dormant.\n\n\u201cWould it surprise you to hear,\u201d she began, with the sensation of coming\ninto the open, under fire, \u201cthat a woman has held her tongue about you\nfor some time past?\u201d\n\nHe half turned and looked hard at her. \u201cI have ceased to be surprised at\nanything a woman may do, but I should certainly like to hear the\nparticulars of such a piece of self-sacrifice.\u201d\n\nSlaney hesitated. It was nearly impossible to say it. The twilight was\nfalling and the thrushes in the shrubberies below were piercing it with\nlong shafts of rhapsody. Lady Susan and Bunbury were walking under the\nbare and drooping branches some distance in front.\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d repeated Glasgow, \u201cwhat about this martyr to principle?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was I,\u201d she said, and everything around seemed to throb and stand\nstill, like her heart.\n\n\u201cPerhaps you will kindly explain what you mean,\u201d he said, very coldly\nand politely.\n\n\u201cYou lent me a book last month--the _Fortnightly Review_--and I found a\nletter to you in it, a letter that you had forgotten was there.\u201d\n\nHe remained silent for a moment, and then spoke with a jerk--\n\n\u201cMay I ask who it was from?\u201d\n\n\u201cA woman.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou read it?\u201d\n\n\u201cI could hardly help reading it, it was all on the first sheet.\u201d\n\nShe looked at him with the courage of an honourable nature owning to\nwhat it would self-righteously have despised in another, and he saw the\nmoistness in her eyes.\n\n\u201cOh yes, I understand that quite well,\u201d he replied, with a quickness\nthat did honour both to him and to her.\n\nThere was a pause.\n\n\u201cI burned it at once,\u201d she added.\n\n\u201cOh!\u201d There was no shade of feeling in the monosyllable. \u201cI remember the\nletter you speak of,\u201d he went on very quietly; \u201cwhat I cannot understand\nis why you have told me of it? I can hardly think it was for the sake of\nsaying something unpleasant.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was because I am fond of Lady Susan,\u201d she said desperately.\n\nIn the silence that followed it seemed to her as though she had thrown a\nheavy stone into deep water, without hope of result beyond the broken\nmirror and the flagging ripple.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\n\nNext morning, while the last of three white frosts was vanishing from\nthe grass, Hugh stood in the hall at French\u2019s Court, pinning a bunch of\nviolets into his red coat. Tops and waistcoat, tie and pin, obeyed to a\nhair-breadth the minute rigour of male fashion in the hunting-field, the\nviolets made their bold yet not exasperating contrast with the scarlet,\nand Hugh\u2019s pale face was almost picturesque in its gay and vivid\nsetting. Taking up his flask, he went to the dining-room and filled it\nat the sideboard with old liqueur brandy; he poured out a glass from the\nsame bottle, and was going to raise it to his lips, when he heard voices\noutside the open door. One of the voices was his wife\u2019s, and he heard it\nwith that sense of severance from her affairs that had been his since\nhe and his gun-cases had reappeared at French\u2019s Court the evening\nbefore. He was not usually sensitive to social temperatures, but it\nseemed to him that there was something flat and ungenial about the whole\nparty. Bunbury was spasmodically agreeable, Slaney was silent, his wife\nwas heavy-eyed and listless; he encouraged and nurtured the bitter\nconviction that no one wanted him.\n\n\u201cI suppose you\u2019re riding Gambler to-day?\u201d Major Bunbury was saying to\nsome one in the hall.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d replied Lady Susan, speaking rather quickly and indistinctly, \u201cI\u2019m\nriding Mr. Glasgow\u2019s old horse, Solomon, you know. He came over last\nnight. I\u2019ve always wanted to try him.\u201d\n\nBunbury whistled a few bars of a tune, and knocked down things in the\nwhip-rack.\n\n\u201cHugh\u2019s riding that grey,\u201d she went on; \u201cit\u2019s quite absurd. He can\u2019t do\nanything with him, and he only makes an exhibition of himself.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, the horse is all right now,\u201d replied Bunbury, lowering his voice;\n\u201che was very green that first day that Hugh rode him.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well,\u201d she said, \u201cyou\u2019ll see. He won\u2019t take that horse across two\nfences to-day.\u201d\n\nBunbury passed on out of the hall door, and left Lady Susan standing on\nthe doorstep. She looked up at the cold blue and uncertain grey of the\nsky, and out at the ruffled and hazy sea, the strong light showing lines\nof sleeplessness about her eyes; then, turning back into the house, she\nmet her husband. She did not suppose that he had overheard her, yet she\nwas aware of something in his lonely face that she did not care to look\nat. She went to the table and took up her gloves without speaking.\n\n\u201cHullo!\u201d she exclaimed, \u201cthere\u2019s a letter here that came for you. I\nfound it on the floor one night, and didn\u2019t think it worth sending on.\nSome one has shoved it behind the card-tray.\u201d\n\nHugh looked at the vulgar and rambling handwriting, and mechanically\ntore open the envelope. It was a letter clearly written in close and\ncrooked lines, and its purport appeared to be a confused complaint of\n\u201cpersecution\u201d received from the hounds in connection with the covert of\nCahirdreen. Hugh read on with a frowning brow. In other days he would\nhave asked his wife to come and read it over his shoulder, but that time\nseemed now very far away.\n\nGlasgow\u2019s name appeared in the letter, with more complaints of\npersecution; he hardly tried to understand what it was all about. All at\nonce his wife\u2019s name seemed to leap out from the paper, and to sink\nback, indelible, irrevocable, linked to Glasgow\u2019s by two or three gross\nand barbarous phrases, by a warning not less crude, by a cunning\ntreatment of the matter as one of common knowledge. There was no\nsignature, nothing to suggest its connection with the dead hand that\nstill clutched the broken reed when Tom Quin\u2019s body was taken from the\npond.\n\nHugh raised his eyes and looked at his wife, tasting in that moment the\ntranscendent anguish of the mind that once or twice in a lifetime\nteaches the body what suffering can be. She was buttoning her glove,\nstanding tall and straight in the light from the open door, in all the\nspotless austerity of her black habit and white tie. She seemed far out\nof the reach of accusation, yet, as he took in every well-known line,\nforgotten things rose up against her in an evil swarm. His belief in her\nwas falling with the fall of a strong and shading tree; he clung to it\neven as it fell; and all the while she stood and buttoned the glove\nacross her white wrist.\n\nAt half-past eleven a misty fog was drifting loosely up from the\nsouth-west on the shoulders of the thaw, and the group of riders outside\nthe cover of Cahirdreen began to turn up their collars. It was a small\ngroup, and an eye accustomed to the usual muster would have noticed at\nonce the absence of Mr. Glasgow; he was one of the people whose presence\nmakes itself felt in all the varied fortunes of a day\u2019s hunting. As the\nminutes passed, and the horses nibbled idly at the gorse in the fence,\nthe dispensary doctor closed the top of his flask with a snap, and\nremarked facetiously that he supposed business must sometimes come\nbefore pleasure, even with railway contractors.\n\nLady Susan was at a little distance, apparently absorbed, as was her\nwont, in attentiveness to what was going on in covert. At the laugh that\nfollowed Dr. Hallahan\u2019s remark, she moved away, and rode slowly along\nthe edge of the wood. She was on Solomon, who had already taken full\nnote of a lighter hand, a lighter weight, and the absence of spurs: he\nhad had ideas about bucking on the road to testify his appreciation of\nthese things, but on finding that Lady Susan had also ideas of her own\non the subject, he had made up his mind to treat her with respect. She\nrode on round the top of the covert, and stationed herself on its\nfarther side; Solomon stood like a rock, with his brown roach back\nhumped against the cold mist.\n\nThe hounds had been put in at the lower end of the wood, and were\nworking through it, so far without result. As before, when Cahirdreen\nhad been drawn, Danny-O was not to be found when the time came for him\nto take the hounds through the covert, and the master, on his grey\nhorse, was riding up a track in the heart of the wood, where the mist\nhad as yet scarcely made its way, and the silence dwelt like a spirit.\nThe horse went ever more slowly among the slender stems of the\nfir-trees, sharing in the lethargy conveyed by the slack rein and the\nloose leg of his rider, while the hounds were pushing well ahead through\nthe briars and the bracken, leaving Hugh behind. A straggler or two\npassed him by, with a wary eye on the whip, not realizing, as the house\ndog so readily does, that human beings have preoccupations in which dogs\ncan be ignored.\n\nIt was some time before Hugh noticed the fact that there was somebody\nnear him in the wood--a figure moving among the trees at a little\ndistance. The Scotch firs and larch had been thinned out here for sale\nto the contractor of the new railway line, and the wood was more open.\nThe figure was that of an old man, who seemed to be advancing in a\ndirection parallel with Hugh. Sometimes the misty fog blotted him out,\nsometimes the grouping of the tree-stems conspired to hide him; he went\nonward as if fitfully; the moments when he was lost to sight scarcely\naccounted for his reappearances farther on. He shuffled like an infirm\nman, yet his progress through the undergrowth was so steady that it\nseemed as if he were walking on a path. Irritated at length by the\npersistent espionage, Hugh called to him to ask what he was doing in the\ncovert. He received no reply, and the mist crept in between them. When\nit cleared again the old man was crossing an open space fifty yards\naway. Hugh noticed the profound melancholy of his bent head, the yellow\npaleness of his cheek. Even while something familiar about him vexed\nHugh\u2019s memory, like an evil dream half-forgotten, he appeared to\nstumble, and fell with out-spread arms and without a sound into some\nunseen hollow or ditch. Hugh pressed the grey horse through the briars\nand under the branches till he reached the spot; he pulled up abruptly\nas he found himself at the edge of a disused sandpit. There were a few\nrocks flung about at the bottom of it, with the briars growing among\nthem; a rabbit came up out of them, and scuttled to its burrow in the\nsand at the sound of the horse\u2019s tread; nothing else whatever was there.\n\nHugh put his hand to his head and wondered if he were going mad. Then,\nquite unexpectedly, his knees began to tremble, and the breath of the\nunknown entered into him, cowing the conventions and disbeliefs of\nordinary life. At the same instant a hound began to throw his tongue in\nthe covert, two or three more joined, and the grey horse turned of\nhimself to get back to the path. As if through a dark atmosphere of\nforeboding and doom Hugh heard the whimpers strengthen to yells in all\nthe wild and animal and mundane delight of hunting; he moved\nmechanically on, while the borders of existence became immeasurable\nabout him, and his unhappiness stretched out into all futurity. There\nwas a rustle in the undergrowth near him, and a fox slipped across the\npath and away among the trees towards the fence that bounded the wood.\nIt was silver-grey, with black ears and paws, its eyes as it glanced at\nHugh were like topazes, and seemed full of the cold lore of unearthly\nthings. The thrill went again from Hugh\u2019s heart to his throat, and died\naway in a sickly chill.\n\n\u201cDamn it all!\u201d he broke out suddenly, \u201cwhat am I afraid of? I\u2019m going to\nbreak my neck--that\u2019s what it is--and the sooner the better.\u201d\n\nAn old hound came working and yelping up through the dead bracken; she\nflung up her head with a long shriek of excitement as she crossed the\npath; half-a-dozen others rushed to her well-known cry, and went\nstreaming past on the line. The grey horse was quivering and hopping\nfrom leg to leg with excitement. Hugh could feel his heart beating up\nthrough the saddle.\n\n\u201cAll right, you devil,\u201d he said, turning him through the trees at a\ntrot; \u201cyou\u2019ll get a skinful of it now.\u201d\n\nThe bank was blind and high, and the last hounds were struggling over it\nwith difficulty; Hugh rode along it for a hundred yards or so at a\ncanter, with branches hitting him in the face, till he found a place\nthat seemed possible, and sent the horse at it with a cruel dig of the\nspurs. In three big bounds the grey was at the fence, the fourth landed\nhim on top among briars and furze, and a drop of seven or eight feet\ninto a marshy hollow was revealed. Lady Susan\u2019s handling had not been\nlost on the grey; he kept his head up, and jumped out like a stag,\nlanding clear of the rotten ground, and collecting himself in a moment\nwith his eye on the hounds. Hugh sat him loosely and recklessly; what he\nfelt was not pleasure, yet it was not wholly removed from it. He had, at\nall events, the fierce and bitter satisfaction of taking his weaker\nnature by the throat, and keeping it down, even to the death that every\nfibre was expectant of.\n\nOne other rider had seen the hounds going away. As Hugh turned down the\nhill, with the pack already three fields ahead, he saw through the mist\nthat a lady on a brown horse had got away on good terms with them from\nthe first. It was his wife, on Glasgow\u2019s horse. The rest of the field\nwere left at the wrong side of the covert, ignorant of the fact that the\nfox had gone away, and, from the line that he had taken, not likely to\nknow for some time. Certainly Hugh was not in the mood to remember\ntheir existence. He took the grey horse by the head and galloped him at\na loose stone wall. They were over with a send and a swoop, and Hugh\nbegan to lose the cold trembling in his knees, and to feel again the\nforgotten grip and swing. Somewhere in the back of his heart he was\nafraid, but sinister clouds of fatalism and heats of jealousy were\nbetween him and that latent and irresponsible treachery of the nerves.\n\nThe hounds were running hard, down towards the railway, and Lady Susan\nwas going at her ease with them on Solomon. They flashed across it, and\nHugh saw his wife ride unhesitatingly at the stark bog drain, that was\nthe only fence of the unfinished line. The old horse jumped it like a\nfour-year-old, and as he scrambled up the embankment Lady Susan looked\nback: the mist was creeping down the hill, but Hugh knew that she could\nnot mistake the grey horse. He swore to himself that he would show her\nthat he was as good a man as Glasgow, his horse as good as Glasgow\u2019s;\nthe most primitive and animal of human hatreds had taken hold of him,\nand was disfiguring mind and face like a possession of the devil.\n\nIn a minute the hoofs of the grey were thudding on the railway sleepers,\nbut in that minute the hounds and Lady Susan had slipped away again; he\nfelt that if they got any farther from him he would lose them in the\nmist. The going was heavy and the banks rotten in the boggy lowlands\nbeyond the line. He took no care to pick his way, but rode wildly\nthrough swampy patches and over rocks muffled in furze, in pursuit of\nthe flying shadow that the mist was momently hiding from him. It was not\nthe way to get safely over a bad country. In the next five minutes the\ngrey horse had twice been nearly down, and his white nose was black with\nbog mud; he had given up pulling, yet he was going at his best, strong\nand free, and his ears were pricked as gallantly as ever towards his\nwork.\n\nThey had galloped perhaps three miles, and were bending back again\ntowards the railway; Hugh was nearer to his wife by a hundred yards as\nhe came with a heavy drop into a lane up which the hounds were running,\nand thundered up it in her wake, neither knowing nor caring where he\nwas. The fact that they suddenly recrossed the railway by a level\ncrossing conveyed to him no sense of locality. He was possessed by the\npassion to let his wife see that he was not afraid; to leave her and her\nborrowed horse behind; and, having gained that miserable joy, to be\nkilled before her eyes. He was as nearly mad as presentiment, physical\nexcitement, and the burning pain of jealousy could make him, and the\ngrey horse was finding it out.\n\nWith a heave and a scramble they were out of the lane and over a bank;\nit was uphill now, in heather and rough ground, and the grey was puffing\naudibly as he answered the relentless spur. The mist thickened on the\nhigher levels, Lady Susan and the hounds were suddenly lost to sight,\nand, after a minute or two of fruitless galloping, Hugh pulled up and\nlistened, with his pulses thumping and his mouth dry. A curlew whistled\noverhead, a trembling crescent of sound, then, high up the hill to his\nleft, he heard again the cry of the hounds. He rode to it desperately,\nskirting a high furzy knoll, and at the other side caught sight of the\npack beginning to run fast again after a check, and his wife was still\nnear them. He saw Solomon slip over a bank and ditch with all the\nseeming ease of a clever horse well ridden, and he cursed him and his\nrider aloud. The paltry blasphemy went out into the wind and mist, and\nwas swallowed up in their large and pure philosophy, and it had scarcely\nleft his lips when the greyness that blurred the hill-top became thinner\nas it drifted, and he saw three tall Druid stones stand out against the\nsky.\n\nImmediately some remembrance, vague yet urgent, drove its way into the\nblind and single resolve of his mind. It was grouse-shooting long\nago,--the grey horse took down half a loose wall with him as he jumped,\nand Hugh chucked him in the mouth and hit him--a man had spoken to him\nthat day about something connected with those stones, he had seen that\nman again lately--quite lately--there was something horrible about it\nall.--Come up, horse! why the devil can\u2019t you look where you\u2019re\ngoing?--and yet it eluded him. Then it came, like the dart of a snake\nout of a ruined wall. It was old Dan Quin, who was dead, whom he had\nseen in the covert; it was Dan Quin who had spoken to him out\ngrouse-shooting; he had pointed to those stones and told him---- Oh,\nGod! his wife was within a hundred yards of the place! He shouted her\nname with his utmost strength. She did not hear him; she was cantering\nSolomon up the field, and the hounds were crossing a fence above her,\nbeside the lean and crooked emblems of the Druids.\n\nThe grey horse was blowing and gulping, yet he answered the furious\nspurring. Hugh shouted again and again, with his eyes straining after\nhis wife\u2019s figure; in the white light of that agony he knew his love for\nher and his helplessness to save her. She turned Solomon at the fence\nbeside the Druid stones; it was a big bank, with withered branches of\nthorn-bushes masking its outline, and she sent him at it hard. The old\nhorse jumped on to it like a cat, seemed to stagger and hesitate, and\nthey both were gone.\n\nThe grey felt his rider relax and sway, but being young he did not\nunderstand what it meant: he was nearing a bank that he felt he could\nnot jump, but the dread of the spur was present with him. He did his\nbest, and but for a rotten take-off he might possibly have scrambled\nover. As it was, his knees took the bank, his hindquarters flew up, and\nhe turned a somer-sault, falling over into the next field. Hugh was\nshot from his back and pitched on his head and shoulder beside the\nhorse. The latter struggled to his feet, but Hugh rolled convulsively to\none side with an inarticulate sound, and lay still.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\n\nThere was an air of calamity and yet of Sunday about the Quins\u2019\nfarmyard. The pigs were shut up, tubs and buckets were put out of sight,\nand Tom Quin\u2019s little nephew, in his best frock, spent many hours of\nblissful autocracy in driving the fowl from the doorstep to Siberias\nbehind the rick of turf. Very early in the day two stalwart and dapper\nmembers of the Royal Irish Constabulary had made their appearance, and\nfrom time to time women in hooded blue cloaks made their way along the\ncauseway that skirted the manure heap, groaned, crossed themselves, and\nentered the house. In a large shed where Tom Quin had often threshed\noats and chopped furze, his body had been laid on two tables, and\ncovered with a sheet, some superstition about the drowned forbidding\nthat it should be taken into the house, lest death might strike another\nthere.\n\nAwaiting inquest, the sheeted figure lay in its hidden awfulness, with\nthe crooked rafters and the sedgy thatch above, and the candles burning\nat the head and feet in the grey winter air, wan yet ardent, like the\nflame of faith in the world\u2019s cold noonday. Beside the body the widow\nQuin sat upon the earthen floor, with a black handkerchief tied over her\nspotless cap frill, and did not cease from the low moaning and weeping\nof unstanched grief. Sympathizers stood at the door and looked at her,\nan intense comprehension of her suffering blending itself with the\ninevitable fascination of the event, and prayers for the repose of the\ndead man\u2019s soul were offered with a reality in which a sense of the\nextreme necessity for them was not concealed.\n\nIt was nearly twelve o\u2019clock when Maria Quin came out of the house with\na cup of tea in her hand; she had on her black best dress, and her\nboots creaked loudly. She said nothing to those whom she passed, but\ntook the cup of tea to her mother, placing it in the reluctant hand that\ntwisted the apron corner.\n\n\u201cTake it, asthore, take it now,\u201d chorussed the sympathizers.\n\n\u201cL\u2019ave her alone. Don\u2019t be lookin\u2019 at her,\u201d said her daughter, in the\nhard voice that had remained unshaken through the morning. She closed\nthe door in their faces, and when she presently came out again with the\nempty cup, smeared with the stain of the poisonous stuff it had\ncontained, all recognized that the first step in the consolation of the\nWidow Quin had been accomplished.\n\nMaria turned away. Her head ached wildly, and instead of returning to\nthe house, she passed round the end of the shed, and into the field at\nthe back, that the damp wind of the hillside might blow upon her hot\nforehead. Her face was quite white under its sunburn and freckles,\nexcept where the skin below the eyes showed a lavender tinge; the eyes\nthemselves had a dry stare in them, yet there was nothing random or\nungoverned about her. Grief drives the active to activity, and perhaps\nthe long toils of the night, when successive candles found her still\nsweeping and washing in preparation for the wake and the inquest, had\nsaved her from the reaction from her outburst in the wood; perhaps\npassion is normal and without reaction in those whose hair is truly red.\n\nThe wind soothed her aching head, and she went slowly on and sat down on\na stone, with the empty cup and saucer in her lap, looking away up the\nslope to where a ridge of hill was visible through the soft movement of\nthe mist. She did not at first observe that a grey animal with a black\nmuzzle had leaped on to the loose wall that surrounded the field she was\nin, and was crouching and looking at her intently. It jumped down with\nexquisite lightness, a pale grey fox with a beautiful white-tipped\nbrush, and crossed the open towards the barn where Tom Quin lay. As it\ndid so, Maria saw it, and sprang to her feet, her mouth open and her\neyes starting. The cup and saucer fell with a clatter, and the fox,\nwhich had seemed disposed to loiter as it passed close under the wall of\nthe shed, glanced back, looked about it, and after a moment of seeming\nindecision, turned and trotted at its ease up the hill, heading\napparently for much the same point as that from which it had just come.\nGrey as the mist itself, it glided away, till it disappeared among the\nclumps of gorse, while somewhere overhead a seagull made its unhappy\ncry.\n\nMaria Quin fell on her knees with absolute simplicity and spontaneity.\nShe was not frightened in the ordinary sense of the word, but she\nacknowledged the power of the unseen things that had worked together to\nher brother\u2019s undoing, and she cast herself on a higher protection, half\ndoubtful as she was of its right to intervene. As she knelt, with her\nhand thrust in the bosom of her dress to grasp the picture of the Sacred\nHeart that hung around her neck, the cry of hounds came to her ear; it\napproached rapidly, and she jumped up, full of a blind indignation\nagainst those who, for their own amusement, had wrecked the fortunes of\na family, and now came to gallop past the house of death, guided by that\ngrey and ill-omened thing. Half-a-dozen hounds passed her, hot on the\nline of the fox, with their heads up; they overran it and tried back,\nthen picked it up by the shed as if they were lapping it off the grass,\nand with whimpers bursting into the firm note of hunting, went away up\nthe hill and were lost to sight amongst the furze. Others followed in\ntheir track, and Maria, maddened by their brutal self-engrossment, their\ncheery and inconsequent voices, ran in the direction from which they had\ncome, with some inflaming idea of stopping the riders who would follow,\nequally self-engrossed, infinitely more brutal and desecrating.\n\nAs she climbed the first wall, a horse and rider leaped up into view on\na high bank some two hundred yards away to her right, near where three\nthin and slanting Druidic stones were dimly seen through the mist. They\ndropped down out of sight among a wild growth of hazels. Maria stood\nstock still; the powers of darkness had outrun her. Neither horse nor\nrider reappeared. It was stunningly complete, it was terrific and just\nretribution, but yet--oh, Mother of Our Lord!--the rider was a woman.\n\nThe peasant heart struggled in the grave-clothes of hatred and\nsuperstition, and burst forth with its native impetuousness and warmth.\nMaria started forward and ran towards the field where the hazels grew.\nShe ran clumsily because of her ill-made boots, but she got over the\nground with surprising quickness. She climbed another wall, a strong one\nwith thorn-bushes laid along the top, and was in a small field full of\ngrey clumps of young hazel. She skirted these rapidly, but with care,\nand once jumped across an ugly cleft among the bushes. The hounds were\nall about her again, but they were silent now, and were hunting to and\nfro among the hazel-bushes, and leaping backwards and forwards over\nrifts in the ground similar to that which Maria had just crossed. Before\nher was the high bank, showing above a long strip of hazel scrub; she\nthrust herself, breathless, in among the thick and sturdy growth, her\neyes dilated with apprehension, her red hair falling loose in the wind.\nA cry for help arose at her step, scarcely three yards away; she broke\nher way to it through the crush of young branches, and saw, as if coming\nup out of the ground, two gloved hands, clutching all they could hold of\ntwigs and saplings, that bent lithely with the weight that hung from\nthem.\n\nLady Susan was hanging over the verge of a deep and wide cleft, masked\non one side by hazels and briars; her face looked up, deeply flushed,\nand distorted from the whirl of the terrible moments that make a vortex\nround death, yet it was obvious that even in that extremity she had not\nlost her presence of mind. Maria dropped on her knees, and twining her\nleft arm round a strong stem, stretched down her muscular right hand.\nLady Susan could not let go and grasp it, and Maria caught her by the\nwrist and drew her slowly upward. There was a struggle, and a tremendous\nstrain on the arms; both women kept steady and firm, and Lady Susan got\nher knee over the edge and fell forward on to Maria\u2019s shoulder. Her hat\ndangled by its guard, her habit sleeve had burst away from the shoulder,\nher patent-leather boots were cut and scraped by the crevices in which\nthey had searched to find a footing; she drew hard breaths in the effort\nto recover herself.\n\n\u201cIs the horse killed?\u201d she said hoarsely, scrambling on to her feet and\nlooking down through the naked branches that fringed the long cleft.\n\nEven the first glance could certify that Solomon had met his death in an\ninstant. He lay in a heap in the obscurity forty feet below, on loose\nrocks among dark water; his head was doubled under his chest at an\nimpossible angle that told the tale of a broken neck. The uttermost\neffort of a good horse had not been enough to save him, when he had\ntried to jump out from the top of the high bank across a chasm nearly\ntwenty feet wide. That endeavour and all his simple and gallant life\nseemed expressed in the wreck of strength and intelligence that lay\nbelow, with the water washing over the flap of the saddle, over the\nshapely brown fetlocks, over the thin and glossy mane.\n\nIt was mysterious water, an underground stream that slid out of the dumb\nand sightless caverns of the rock, and passed away into them again with\na swirl, a stealthy swift thing, escaping always from the eye of day,\nand eating the foundations of the limestone walls that sheltered it.\n\nLady Susan still held the hand that had rescued her; it led her through\nthe brush-wood to open ground, till the short wet grass was under her\nfeet and the mist blew in her face. She turned her head away, and the\nsobs broke from her. Any one who has loved horse or dog will know how\nand where they touch the heart and command the tear. Let us trust that\nin some degree it is known to them also, that the confiding spirit may\nunderstand that its god can grieve for it.\n\nMaria Quin looked at Lady Susan with eyes that were as dry as glass. The\nIrish peasant regards the sorrow for a mere animal as a childishness\nthat is almost sinful, a tempting of ill fate in its parody of the grief\nrightly due only to what is described as \u201ca Christhian\u201d; and Maria\u2019s\nheart glowed with the unwept wrongs of her brother.\n\n\u201cWhat happened him?\u201d she asked, and the knot of pain and outrage was\ntight in her voice.\n\n\u201cI tried to pull him back when I saw what was coming,\u201d said Lady Susan,\nwith difficulty. \u201cI couldn\u2019t stop him; he had too much way on. I only\ndid harm. I think he would have got across only for that.\u201d She stopped\nand gulped down the sob. It was dreadful to her to cry before an\ninferior. \u201cHe all but got over, but he dropped his hind legs into it and\nfell back. I somehow caught those branches just as he was going, and he\ndropped away from under me, and I hung there. I couldn\u2019t climb up. Then\nyou came.\u201d She recovered herself a little, and turned towards her\nrescuer. \u201cI haven\u2019t thanked you yet. It was awfully good and plucky of\nyou.\u201d\n\nTheir eyes met, and it seemed as if till then Lady Susan had not\nrecognized Maria Quin. She visibly flinched, and her flushed face became\na deeper red, while the hand that had begun to feel for her purse came\nout of her pocket empty.\n\n\u201cLittle ye cried yestherday whin ye seen my brother thrown out on the\nground by the pool,\u201d said Maria, with irrepressible savageness, \u201cyou\nthat\u2019s breakin\u2019 yer heart afther yer horse.\u201d\n\nLady Susan took the blow in silence, and that quality in her that can\nonly be described as an absence of smallness, dimly appealed to the\ncountry-woman, as occasionally through Lady Susan\u2019s careless life it had\nhad its effect on women of her own class.\n\n\u201cD\u2019ye know yer way home out o\u2019 this?\u201d said Maria sullenly. \u201cIf ye\u2019ll\ncome with me I\u2019ll show ye the short way out into the bohireen below our\nhouse.\u201d She was beginning to be sorry for what she had said, or perhaps\nthe saying of it had eased her heart. \u201cOne that didn\u2019t know this field\nwould aisy be killed in it. It\u2019s full o\u2019 thim cracks, and we have it\nfinced sthrong from the sheep.\u201d She turned and pointed to the tall\nDruidic stones. \u201cWhile ye live ye\u2019ll mind yerself whin ye see thim. I\nthought every one in the counthry knew this place. But sure what are you\nbut a sthranger!\u201d She said it more kindly, and as if explaining the\nposition to herself.\n\n\u201cLook here,\u201d said Lady Susan suddenly, \u201cI want to tell you that I don\u2019t\ndeserve this kindness from you, and I\u2019m truly sorry for all that has\nhappened about the hounds. It won\u2019t happen any more. Will you--will you\naccept my regret for anything I have done to annoy you, and my sympathy\nabout your brother? I didn\u2019t understand how things were----\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, God help ye!\u201d broke out Maria, \u201cwhat does the likes o\u2019 ye\nundherstand about the likes of us? It wasn\u2019t wanting to desthroy us ye\nwere, I know that well--and faith! I think ye have nature that\u2019d make ye\nsorry if ye seen my brother this day where he\u2019s lying beyond. I know\nwell the one that have no pity; maybe he\u2019ll be in the want of it yet.\u201d\nShe took Lady Susan by the sleeve, staring at her as if taking in her\ngood looks. \u201cMind yerself!\u201d she said in a whisper; \u201cthat fella would\nthrow ye on the roadside whin he\u2019d be tired o\u2019 ye. Don\u2019t be makin\u2019\nlittle o\u2019 yerself with the likes o\u2019 him--you that has a good husband and\nnothin\u2019 to throuble ye. I can tell ye of the day I wint to Glashgow to\nthe office, axing him to take back the price o\u2019 the land, and he put a\nhand on me to kiss me; he thought that was all he had to do to humour\nme. He remembers that day agin me yet. It couldn\u2019t be that you, that\nmight be talkin\u2019 to the Lord Left\u2019nant or any other, would bring sorrow\non yerself for the sake of _him_.\u201d\n\nNeither the straining misfit of the black dress, nor the atrocious\npretensions of the cheap boots, could impute vulgarity to the speaker.\nLady Susan kept her eyes on the ground with a firmly-set mouth, and\nMaria turned away in the direction from which she had come. She was\novertaken almost immediately.\n\n\u201cI am going back the other way,\u201d said Lady Susan. \u201cI\u2019m afraid my husband\nor some one may be coming this way and not know of this place, and I\nmust tell them where the hounds are, but---- Good-bye.\u201d She put out her\nhand in its torn glove; it was still trembling from exertion. There was\na moment\u2019s pause, and the country-woman\u2019s hard, red hand took it and\nshook it, and dropped it.\n\nNeither spoke, but some thrill ran home to Maria\u2019s heart with the\nmeeting of the palms, and sent the dew to her hot eyes. They separated\nin silence, and Lady Susan, following the long cleft to its termination,\nclimbed up the bank. Looking back, she saw the hounds still hurrying in\nand out among the hazels in excited and fruitless search, and beyond\nthem Maria\u2019s black figure going away into the mist and fog. She walked\nuncertainly, and once or twice her hand went up to her eyes.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\n\nAs Lady Susan scrambled down the other side of the bank she said\nmechanically to herself that Hugh must have taken another turn before\nthey crossed the railway, only for that she would have seen him when she\nlooked back before she rode at her last jump. How extraordinarily well\nhe had been going--how long ago it seemed, and yet it could only have\nbeen about ten minutes. Below her stretched the long fields up which\nSolomon had carried her; the mist swept thick and cold across them,\nshutting out the rest of the world, and making their loneliness more\ncomplete. A grey horse was moving up the field towards her; she walked\nuneasily towards it, crippled by her safety habit, stiff in every limb.\nShe could at first only make out that it was lame, she neared and saw a\nsaddle and dangling reins. The stillness of the hillside seemed to tell\nher the rest. She came up to the grey horse and took him by the head; he\nwas dead lame and trembling all over, there was mud on his jaw, on his\nshoulder, on the saddle. She had seen before what horses looked like\nafter a bad fall. She led him down the field in the direction from which\nhe had come, and saw, away by the fence, a motionless spot of scarlet\nand white.\n\nIn a few moments she was on her knees beside her husband. His face was\nburied in a heather tussock, his hands were clinched in the black and\nboggy soil; as she tried to turn him over the blood trickled heavily\nfrom the corner of his mouth. A little gurgling sound in his throat told\nher that he was alive, but he was far away in that trance of physical\ndefeat in which soul and body seem alike absorbed.\n\nShe was wholly unversed in illness, un-acquainted with death, but in\nthe novels she had read episodes of fainting had been freely scattered,\nand they had left a general idea in her mind. With shaking fingers,\nshaking from her recent struggle and the impact of this latest shock,\nshe unfastened Hugh\u2019s hunting-tie and the neck of his shirt, while her\nsinking heart told her of her own ignorance and loneliness, and the\nwhite face remained unmoved. It seemed to have become smaller, and the\ntemples hollow and blue. She took off the glove from the heavy, listless\nhand, and tried with her unskilled fingers to feel the pulse. It was\njust perceptible, and at the contact with that thread of life shut up\ninside the intolerable mystery of unconsciousness, the fear, the\nparalyzing helplessness began to give way. Something like the clinking\nof a tin can came to her ear, and she started up. Two little girls, with\nred petticoats over their heads, were crossing the field, and Lady Susan\nran towards them, calling with what voice she could muster. At sight of\nthe dishevelled vision in top-boots and a man\u2019s hat emerging from the\nmist, the children seemed disposed to fly, but finally came to her. Her\nheart sank as she saw their hesitating, timorous faces. Could she make\nthem understand? To every request they returned the same whispered \u201cWe\nwill, miss,\u201d with their lovely eyes cast down in shyness, but\nhalf-a-crown and a glimpse of the figure lying by the fence quickened\ntheir sense of the seriousness of the matter. They were taking their\nfather\u2019s dinner to where he was working on the line, they would run on\nto Letter Kyle with a note to the doctor, they would send people to\nhelp. Their nimble red feet seemed to promise speed; Lady Susan snatched\nout her pencil-case, but on what was the note to be written? It came to\nher like a flash that she had seen Hugh put a letter into his\nbreast-pocket before he started; the inside of the envelope would do.\n\nShe went back to him, and with a shrinking hand moved the inert form and\nfound the letter. As she took it out of the envelope she saw her own\nname and that of Glasgow; and in one blinding moment read the sentence\nthat connected them. There was a pause. She looked up and saw the\ninnocent and awe-struck eyes of the children fixed on her as they stood,\ntoo frightened to come near the prostrate figure in the red coat. She\nput the letter into her own pocket, and opening out the envelope wrote\non it her demand for help, for a doctor, for a carriage from French\u2019s\nCourt. The final \u201cWe will, miss,\u201d was murmured, the red legs carried the\nchildren down the hill at full speed, till the rhythmic clanking of the\nmilk-can died away.\n\nLet her not be blamed if her first thought was for herself and her\nposition. Her seven-and-twenty years, her careless and daring\nflirtations, and her marriage, had not taught her what it was to be in\nlove. She knew that Hugh was in love with her; it was a comfortable\nknowledge, pleasant and commonplace as sunshine, and she had no more\nreal comprehension of what he might suffer on her behalf than she had of\nthe flames of hell. She thought first of herself, accused in public,\naccused in private; she put her hands over her face and said she would\ngo away and never come back to French\u2019s Court, where the people spent\ntheir time in spying and telling these foul, infernal lies. Hughie would\nbelieve her anyhow. She would tell him all about it. It wasn\u2019t so very\nmuch, after all, and he wasn\u2019t a bit strait-laced. She took her hands\nfrom her face and saw the motionless body flung in the heathery grass,\nthe vacant brow, the strangeness, the terrific pallor. She stood as\npeople stand when the sudden inrush of an idea overwhelms the physical\npart of them; it had come to her that it might be too late to tell\nHughie about it. It sank into her soul, carrying with it the remembrance\nof her husband standing by the hall door with the letter in his hand. He\nhad read it before he started; he had only spoken to her once\nafterwards, something about the balance-strap of her saddle, but he had\nnot seemed different. She had noticed that he looked ill, and had\npresently forgotten all about it. The past flowed in on her; his\nkindliness, his simpleness, his straightness, most of all, that belief\nin her that was bound up in the deepest heart of an unjealous nature.\n\nThe face that lay sideways in the heather began to torture her with its\nmute reproach; she knelt down beside him, tearless and tense, enduring\nstrong feeling as the undemonstrative must endure it. She bent over him\nat length, and, as if half afraid, stooped her head and kissed the pale\ncheek, knowing for the first time the dreadful kiss that is so much to\none, so much less than nothing to the other.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV\n\n\nIt was a singular piece of good luck that the two children with the\nmilk-can should have met Dr. Hallahan riding homewards down a lane after\nan ineffectual search for the hounds. It was also fortunate that it\nbeing, so to speak, but the third hour of the day, he was perfectly,\nalmost dismally sober. It was barely a quarter of an hour before he was\nunfastening Hugh\u2019s waistcoat and feeling him all over, while Lady Susan\nstood silently by. She had found water in a ditch, and brought it in her\nhat; she stood motionless, with her fashionable head bare to the mist,\nand when Dr. Hallahan looked up at her he was aware that a handsomer and\nmore haggardly-set face had never waited for his verdict.\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s badly hurt, Lady French,\u201d he said, his brogue rough with\ncompassion for her; \u201che seems to have a couple of ribs broken, and\nthere\u2019s probably concussion too, and it might be a bit of a crush under\nthe horse.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh!\u201d said Lady Susan stonily. Then, her brain travelling slowly on,\n\u201cCan we carry him between us? He only weighs nine six.\u201d\n\nAs she spoke she saw that Bunbury, Slaney, and others were hurrying\ntowards them; it did not surprise her, everything seems to be drawn\nnaturally into the suction of disaster.\n\nAfterwards she realized that it was a long time before a messenger\nreturned with a blue counterpane, and other messengers with a couple of\nrails from a wooden paling. A species of hammock was made, and Hugh was,\nwith utmost care, laid in it; she noticed that Dr. Hallahan told the\nbearers not to walk in step. Then Bunbury led up Slaney\u2019s horse, and\ntold her she must get on to it, that she was not able to walk. Bunbury\nwas white and silent; Slaney\u2019s eyes were moist, and her voice unsteady.\nShe seemed to Lady Susan extraordinarily kind.\n\nThey made her drink some whisky out of his flask, and she rode on after\nthe hammock down a sheep-track, along a bohireen that was like the bed\nof a rocky stream, into yet another endless bohireen. Slaney walked\nbeside her; they did not speak, but she knew that Slaney was sorry for\nher. It made her quite sure that Hugh was dying.\n\n\u201cWhere are the hounds?\u201d she said suddenly. \u201cAre they killed too?\u201d\n\n\u201cDan\u2019s got them,\u201d Bunbury answered; \u201cthe fox went down one of the clefts\nin that field, and Fisherman and Mexico went after him. The others are\nall right.\u201d\n\nLady Susan rode on in silence, and Bunbury, leading his horse, walked by\nSlaney. It was quite unnecessary that he should walk, yet Slaney\nunderstood.\n\nThey neared at length a white house with fir-trees round it; there was a\nback entrance into the lane, and the hammock was carried into a yard\nwhere strange lumber lay about; a broken pumping-engine, signal-posts,\nlong white gates.\n\n\u201cMr. Glasgow\u2019s house was nearest,\u201d said Slaney, with her eyes on the\nground. \u201cDr. Hallahan is afraid to take him farther.\u201d\n\nThe back door of the house was open, and they went in, finding\nthemselves in the kitchen.\n\n\u201cNobody in,\u201d said Dr. Hallahan, exploring the back premises rapidly,\n\u201cand no one here either,\u201d opening and shutting the door of Glasgow\u2019s\noffice. \u201cCarry him up. I know the house.\u201d\n\nThe hammock, with its light burden, was engineered up a narrow\nstaircase; as Lady Susan followed, she noticed Glasgow\u2019s gloves on the\nhall-table, his hunting-crop in a rack. They reminded her of all that\nwas now so very far away, they added inconceivably to his reality and\nyet to his remoteness. Meeting him again would be more difficult than\nshe had thought.\n\nDr. Hallahan opened the door of a room on the landing.\n\n\u201cThis is a spare room, I think----\u201d he said, and stopped short.\n\nA woman started up from a table at which she was writing, and stared at\nthem. Her hair was straw-coloured, and drooped in nauseous\npicturesqueness over her coal-black eyebrows; her face was fat and\nwhite, her dress was a highly-coloured effort at the extreme of the\nlatest fashion but one; the general effect was elderly.\n\n\u201cI beg your pardon,\u201d said Dr. Hallahan, recovering himself; \u201cwe\u2019ve\nbrought Captain French here, he\u2019s very badly hurt, and I can\u2019t take him\nany farther. Perhaps you could show us where to put him--or ask Mr.\nGlasgow?\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Glasgow has left;\u201d the voice was nasal and cockney. \u201cYou can take\nthe gentleman into his room for the present, but I\u2019m going to have an\nauction of this furniture in less than a week. I\u2019m just taking an\ninventory now.\u201d\n\nSheets of foolscap paper were scattered on the table, the list of the\nfurniture sprawled over them in large, black, irregular writing. Slaney\nhad seen that writing before; she felt as if she were in a bad dream--a\ndream that she had dreamt before, one that was both tragic and\nridiculous.\n\n\u201cHad I arrived lawst evening things might have been different,\u201d went on\nthe yellow-haired lady; \u201cbut I missed my train.\u201d\n\nThen, with an air that irresistibly suggested the footlights, she moved\nfrom behind the table into a clear space in the room. The bad dream\nculminated; Slaney knew what was coming.\n\n\u201cPerhaps I had better introduce myself,\u201d said the yellow-haired\nlady,--\u201cI am Mrs. Glasgow.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV\n\n\nSix months afterwards, when the August sunshine was hot and yellow, and\nthe streets of Dublin were in a fever from the crowd of the Horse Show\nweek, a breeze was to be found under the elms by the polo ground in\nPh\u0153nix Park. It came from the south, where the Dublin mountains were\ncool and blue; it was sweet with miles of warm grass, and it was nectar\nto the polo ponies as they were led up and down with twitching tails and\nsoapy necks after their turn of play. The people who had driven out to\nsee the match sat in the shade, while men and ponies wheeled and raced\nin the glaring heat, and stroke answered stroke, and the ball was\nworried about in a medley of polo sticks and ponies\u2019 legs.\n\nLady Susan was sitting on an outside car by the rails, never taking her\neyes off the game.\n\n\u201cI call that a brute of a pony,\u201d she said, \u201cdon\u2019t you, Captain Onslow?\u201d\nto a man who stood by the car. \u201cI mean the roan that my husband is on.\nLook there\u201d--as the ball went skipping over the sunny sward, with the\nroan pony and his rider heading the rush after it--\u201csee how he\u2019s\npulling, and if he gets his temper up he bolts, and there\u2019s no holding\nhim. I can\u2019t bear to see Hughie on him.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t think you need be anxious about your husband,\u201d said Captain\nOnslow, inwardly a little piqued by this excessive attention to the game\nand its dangers, \u201cthat pony\u2019s about the best on the ground when he\u2019s\nproperly played, and that\u2019s just what is happening to him. Well hit,\nindeed!\u201d as Hugh turned the ball with a smooth and clean back-hander.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t care,\u201d murmured Lady Susan, \u201cI call polo a beastly dangerous\ngame.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a true bill against Major Bunbury, isn\u2019t it?\u201d asked Captain\nOnslow, presently, lifting an eyebrow in the direction of two people\nstanding by the rails.\n\n\u201cYou go and ask them,\u201d replied Lady Susan.\n\n\u201cDoes that mean you want me to go away?\u201d Captain Onslow said these sort\nof things rather well, and he wanted Lady Susan to look at him and not\nat the polo.\n\nShe glanced down at him in recognition. Her glance was charming.\n\n\u201cIt means----\u201d she began. But there came a thundering of ponies\u2019 hoofs,\na race for the ball with the roan pony getting the best of it again, and\nCaptain Onslow had to do without knowing what Lady Susan meant.\n\nSlaney sat by Lady Susan as they drove back, flying down through the\npark with that exhilarating swing and swiftness that belong exclusively\nto the Dublin outside car. The afternoon was more balmy sweet as the\nshadows lengthened and the coolness came; beyond the beautiful miles of\ngrass and trees the western sky was gathering the warmth of sunset;\nopposite in the east, the brown smoke of Dublin stained the tranquil\nheaven, and above it a ghostly half-moon stood like a little white cloud\nin the depths of blue.\n\nThere are moments in life when it is given to some hearts to know their\nown happiness, and to know it trembling. Come what might, earth\u2019s\ngreatest pleasure was Slaney\u2019s now: she knew it with all the tenderness\nand strong romance that were hidden in her nature, with all the\ncomprehension of herself that had grown out of a bitter experience. It\nwas a state of mind that seemed incompatible with the prosaic tweed\ncoat-sleeve that rested on the car as Major Bunbury leaned across from\nthe other side; but as he looked at her he understood that the exceeding\nbeauty of the evening had in some way touched her nearly as it was\ntouching him. As has been said, he kept a soul somewhere, and Slaney had\nfound it and entered in.\n\n\u201cI want to tell you, Slaney,\u201d said Lady Susan, expressing the position\nfrom her own point of view, \u201cI never saw you look as well as you do\nto-day. I\u2019m awfully glad I made you get that hat. It makes your eyes\njust the right colour.\u201d\n\nLady Susan was beginning to think of getting out of her arm-chair to\ndress for dinner that night when her husband came into the room. He did\nnot look as happy as a man ought who has hit two goals for his side and\nhas been at the club afterwards to hear it talked about, and he came and\nsat on the arm of her chair without speaking.\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t feel bad after all that play?\u201d she said, taking his hand and\ngiving him that look of solicitude and affection that can be the best\nthing in the world to receive.\n\n\u201cNot I--I\u2019m as right as possible. I can\u2019t remember that I ever was\nhurt.\u201d\n\n\u201cI hate you riding the grey to-morrow at the show,\u201d she went on; \u201cI\nshall be miserable all the time. If I were riding him myself I shouldn\u2019t\nremember that there was any danger--and I suppose there isn\u2019t\nreally--but it\u2019s awfully different to look on. I know it\u2019s very rotten\nof me to be afraid, but you know I did get an awful fright about\nyou--that time.\u201d\n\nHe laughed. \u201cYou mustn\u2019t think about all that,\u201d he said gently, \u201cthat\ntime is over and done with.\u201d\n\nThere was a pause.\n\n\u201cI want to tell you a thing I saw at the club just now, a thing in the\npaper----\u201d He seemed rather at a loss how to go on. \u201cIt was about\nGlasgow,\u201d he said uncomfortably. The hand that was in his became rather\nstiff. \u201cPoor chap,\u201d Hugh went on, \u201che was--he met with an accident--I\nmean--in fact, he\u2019s been killed.\u201d There was silence. \u201cHe fell down the\nshaft of a mine or waterworks or something that he was engineering out\nin the Argentine Republic, and was killed on the spot. It\u2019s a ghastly\nsort of thing,\u201d he ended nervously.\n\nShe turned her head till her eyes were hidden against his shoulder. \u201cAll\nright, Hughie,\u201d she said, in a muffled voice, \u201cit\u2019s all right. You know\nI don\u2019t mind. Not really. It\u2019s only--it\u2019s so horrible--and it makes me\nthink of all that time--and what they said of the bad luck, and\neverything----\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I know,\u201d he said, putting his arm round her.\n\n\u201cYou _do_ believe me still that I was only an idiot?\u201d she said, looking\nup at him with the tears in her eyes.\n\nHe kissed her.\n\n\n                               THE END.\n\n                     RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,\n                           LONDON & BUNGAY.","title":"The Silver Fox","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":31787}