“Get out?  No, thank you, Captain Du Meresq,” cried Lilla Tremaine, a tall, handsome girl in the sleigh behind; “you’d find me a precious weight to carry, and I am very comfortable where I am.  Turn away, Captain Delamere, we’ll sink or swim together.”

Thus urged, the individual called on made his effort; the sleigh turned, indeed, but on its side, and the adventurous Miss Tremaine, summarily ejected, sank to her waist in the deep snow, her crinoline rising as she descended, spread out under her arms, looking like an inverted umbrella.  Jack and Bluebell were suffocating with the laughter they vainly tried to hide, and Bertie, who was on foot, took in the situation at once, and rushed to the rescue.

“Put your arms round my neck, Miss Tremaine,” cried he, peremptorily.

The poor girl, half crying with shame and cold, did so, and Du Meresq, grasping her firmly round the waist, endeavoured to drag her forth.

“It’s even betting she pulls him in,” cried Jack, in a most unfeeling ecstasy, for Miss Tremaine was no pocket Venus—­rather answered the Irishman’s description of “an armful of joy.”

“Oh, dear!” said poor Lilla, trembling with cold, as she found herself on terra firma, “I never can go on; the snow has made me quite wet through.”

“Of course you can’t,” said Bertie, decidedly; “you’d catch your death of cold.  Delamere, you drive on with the other Miss Tremaine,” for they had both been in his sleigh, “and I’ll take Miss Lilla home in my cutter, where she can get dry clothes.  You must all pass their house on your way back, when we can fall in again; so that’s all settled.  Oh, Meredith, I forgot you.  Hitch on to some other sleigh, there’s a good fellow.  I am on ambulance duty; somebody tell Colonel Rolleston—­presently.”

Then Bertie, who had his own reasons for hurrying, placed Miss Tremaine, still shivering from her snow bath, in the cutter, and drove rapidly off.

“Well, I am d——­d,” muttered Captain Delamere to Vavasour; “she has never seen the fellow before!”

“Hush, pray,” said Jack, affectedly; “he is an officious young man.  But be thankful for small mercies, old boy; you have got one left.”

“That’s the wrong one,” growled Delamere.

After a brief consultation about the route, a unanimous vote for luncheon was passed, so they drove on till they came to an open space, the contrary side of the wood in which Du Meresq and Bluebell had walked on Sunday.  Here all the sleighs formed up together, and Major Fane’s larder was ransacked.

Curacoa, mulled claret, hot coffee, etc., kept warm in a blanket, were passed round, with mutton pies, croquettes, cakes and other edibles; and circulation being restored, all was mirth and hilarity.

Colonel Rolleston alone remained dark and moody.  He had just discovered the defection of Du Meresq and Lilla, and, having his own opinion of his brother-in-law, disapproved of it entirely.  Miss Tremaine also was much too flighty for his taste, and he was very hard on Captain Delamere for not applying to him to get her decorously out of her delicate dilemma.