“The lad!” he cried, roaring and slapping his thigh in his mirth. “’Tis no lad.  Didst take it for one?  Lord! ’tis Jeoff Wildair’s youngest wench.  ’Tis Clo—­’tis Clo, man.  All the county knows the vixen!”

And at that very instant the hounds sprang forth, giving tongue, and the field sprang forward with them, and all was wild excitement:  cries of “Tally ho!” ringing, horses plunging, red coats seeming to fly through the air; and my lord Marquess went with the field, his cheek hot, his heart suddenly thumping in his breast with a sense of he knew not what, as his eye, following a slender, scarlet-coated figure, saw it lift its horse for a huge leap over a five-barred gate, take it like a bird, and lead the whole scurrying, galloping multitude.

“Yes,” said my Lord Dunstanwolde, as they rode homeward slowly in the evening gray, “’tis the girl infant who was found struggling and shrieking beneath the dead body of her mother, and till to-day I never saw her.  Good Heavens! the beauty of the creature—­the childish deviltry and fire!”

Each turned and looked into the eyes of the other with a question in his thought, and each man’s was the same, though one had lived beyond sixty years and one but twenty-four.  A female creature of such beauty, of such temper, bred in such manner, among such companions, by such parents—­what fate could be before her?  Roxholm averted his eyes.

“Tossed to the wolves,” he said; “tossed to the pack—­to harry and to slaver over!  God’s mercy!”

As they rode he heard the story, Lord Twemlow having related such incidents as he naturally knew to my Lord Dunstanwolde.  ’Twas a bitter history to Twemlow, whose kinsman the late Lady Wildairs had been, and who was a discreetly sober and God-fearing gentleman, to whom irregular habits and the reckless squandering of fortune were loathly things.  And this was the substance of the relation, which was so far out of the common as to be almost monstrous:  His disgust at the birth of this ninth girl infant had so inflamed Sir Jeoffry that he had refused even to behold it and had left it to its fate as if it had been an ill-made, blind puppy.  But two of her Ladyship’s other children had survived their infancy, and of these two their father knew nothing whatever but that they had been called Barbara and Anne, that they showed no promise of beauty, and lived their bare little lives in the Hall’s otherwise deserted west wing, having as their sole companion and instructress a certain Mistress Margery Wimpole—­a timorous poor relation, who had taken the position in the wretched household to save herself from starvation, and because she was fitted for no other; her education being so poor and her understanding so limited, that no reputable or careful family would have accepted her as governess or companion.  Her two poor little charges learned the few things she could teach them, and their meek spiritedness gave her but little trouble.  Their dead mother’s suffering and their father’s rough contempt on the rare occasions when he had chanced to behold them had chastened them to humbleness from their babyhood.  There was none who wanted them, none who served or noticed them, and there was no circumstance which could not restrain them, no person who was not their ruler if ’twas his will.