Larry was staring at Christian as he spoke.  He, like her was searching for his former comrade; but, unlike her, was doing so unconsciously, as Larry did most things:  What he believed himself to be doing was appraising her appearance from a painter’s point of view.  He found he had forgotten her eyes.  He tried to think of them in terms of paint; Brun de Bruxelles, and a touch of cadmium, or was it Verte Emeraude?  Hang it!  How can paint do more than suggest the colours of a sunlit moorland pool?  Was it the white hunting-tie that gave that special “value” to her face He had forgotten how delicious in tone was the faint colour that just tinted her cheek; so hopeless a word as pink was not to be thought of; just a hint of Rose Garance dore, might do it.  And to get the drawing of those subtle outlines the ineffable refinement of all her features.  Larry put his head on one side, and screwed up his eyes (remembering faithfully the injunctions of “dear old Chose,” en clignant bien les yeux) and said to himself that she would put dear old Chose himself to his trumps, and then maybe he wouldn’t get her right!

Aloud he said, peremptorily and professionally: 

“Christian, I’m going to paint you!  Eight o’clock at the studio to-morrow morning, Ma’mselle, s’il vous plait!”

Christian’s response was closured by a wild outcry from the wood, hounds and horn lifting up their voices together in sudden delirium.  Old horses pricked their ears, and young ones, and notably, Nancy, began to fret and to fidget.  Some one said, unnecessarily:  “That’s him!” A man, farther down the road, turned his horse, and standing in his stirrups, stared over the wall into the thick covert, rigid as a dog setting his game.  Then he held up his hat, and, a moment later, something brown glided, with the fluent swiftness of a fish in a stream, across the road and over the opposite wall.  The scream that followed him was not needed; was, indeed, hardly heard in the crashing, clashing clamour of the back, as they came pitching headlong over the wall of the wood, and hurling themselves at the opposite wall.  It was high, and had a coped, top, and the yelling hounds broke against it, and fell, like waves against a cliff.  A couple achieved it, and the anguish of their comrades, as they heard them go away, full-cry, on the line, redoubled.  In the same instant, Larry was off his tall bay.  He flung his reins to Christian, and was into the struggling pack.  It is no easy matter to heave a hound over a high wall, but Larry and a young farmer had somehow shoved over four couple, before Bill Kirby and his whipper-in came and swept the remainder to a place of possible entrance a little further on.