“Ladies,” said the Prince de Cadignan, as the guests were about to separate for the night, “I know that several of you propose to follow the hounds with us to-morrow, and it becomes my duty to tell you that if you will be Dianas you must rise, like Diana, with the dawn.  The meet is for half-past eight o’clock.  I have in the course of my life seen many women display greater courage than men, but for a few seconds only; and you will need a strong dose of resolution to keep you on horseback the whole day, barring a halt for breakfast, which we shall take, like true hunters and huntresses, on the nail.  Are you still determined to show yourselves trained horse-women?”

“Prince, it is necessary for me to do so,” said Modeste, adroitly.

“I answer for myself,” said the Duchesse de Chaulieu.

“And I for my daughter Diane; she is worthy of her name,” added the prince.  “So, then, you all persist in your intentions?  However, I shall arrange, for the sake of Madame and Mademoiselle de Verneuil and others of the party who stay at home, to drive the stag to the further end of the pond.”

“Make yourself quite easy, mesdames,” said the Prince de Loudon, when the Royal Huntsman had left the room; “that breakfast ‘on the nail’ will take place under a comfortable tent.”

The next day, at dawn, all signs gave promise of a glorious day.  The skies, veiled by a slight gray vapor, showed spaces of purest blue, and would surely be swept clear before mid-day by the northwest wind, which was already playing with the fleecy cloudlets.  As the hunting party left the chateau, the Master of the Hunt, the Duc de Rhetore, and the Prince de Loudon, who had no ladies to escort, rode in the advance, noticing the white masses of the chateau, with its rising chimneys relieved against the brilliant red-brown foliage which the trees in Normandy put on at the close of a fine autumn.

“The ladies are fortunate in their weather,” remarked the Duc de Rhetore.

“Oh, in spite of all their boasting,” replied the Prince de Cadignan, “I think they will let us hunt without them!”

“So they might, if each had not a squire,” said the duke.

At this moment the attention of these determined huntsmen—­for the Prince de Loudon and the Duc de Rhetore are of the race of Nimrod, and the best shots of the faubourg Saint-Germain—­was attracted by a loud altercation; and they spurred their horses to an open space at the entrance to the forest of Rosembray, famous for its mossy turf, which was appointed for the meet.  The cause of the quarrel was soon apparent.  The Prince de Loudon, afflicted with anglomania, had brought out his own hunting establishment, which was exclusively Britannic, and placed it under orders of the Master of the Hunt.  Now, one of his men, a little Englishman,—­fair, pale, insolent, and phlegmatic, scarcely able to speak a word of French, and dressed with a neatness which distinguishes all Britons, even those of the lower