“The talk of the lovers in silence dies,
  They weep, yet they know not why tears fill their eyes.”

The old, absurd words, that she had so often laughed at.  She laughed again, but at herself, and sat still, watching the grey mare coming lightly over the sunny grass to her.

“They got him!” Larry shouted, as he came near.  “The brute wouldn’t run for ’em!  Too full of hen, I suppose!  They’re going on now to the gorse in the high paddock.  Why did you come away here?”

“Because I’m illogical.  I like hunting, and I hate catching what I hunt.  Besides, I wanted to think.”

“Rotten habit,” said Larry.  “I won’t have you changing your mind!”

Christian looked at him, and sighed again.  He was on her right, and she took her hunting-crop in her left hand, with the reins, and stretched out her right hand to him.  He caught it, and kissed her slender wrist above the glove.  There came back to Christian, with a rush, the remembrance of the May morning at the kennels when he had kissed her wrist.  That had been the left wrist.  The kiss had meant more to her than it had to him.  Now, as she met his eyes she knew that she and he stood on level ground.

Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?  Those even, who pin it down, and set it up in a glass case in the cause of science and for the edification of an inquisitive public, are not wholly to be commended, praiseworthy though their intentions may be.  Let a rule of silence, therefore be observed, as far as may be.  What this boy and girl said to each other, is their secret, not ours.

The gorse in the high paddock held a fox; several, in fact, a lady having reared a fine young family there without any anxieties as to their support, thanks to the votive offerings of crows and rabbits, obsequiously laid on her doorstep, by her best friend, and her most implacable enemy, Mr. William Kirby, M.F.H.  In recognition, no doubt, of these attentions, the lady in question permitted one of her sons to afford a little harmless pleasure to her benefactor, and this, having included a lively gallop of some three miles, ceased in a plantation where was the place of safety that had been indicated to the beginner, and ceased appositely, at an hour that made a late breakfast at Castle Ire a matter obvious, even imperative, for those who were not prepared to await, in patient starvation, that very inferior repast, an early lunch.

Young Mrs. Kirby had not lost, with matrimony, the habit of having her own way.

“No, Christian, you’re not going home.  You haven’t seen Baby, and he really looks rather sweet in his new—­” (a negligible matter, whatever the attire the formulae being unvaried)—­“and, besides,” continued young Mrs. Kirby, with decision, “I want to talk to you.”

Being talked to by Judith was an adequate modern equivalent for an interview with the “Jailer’s Daughter,” as a method of obtaining information.