Livingstone gazed piercingly at her for several instants without moving a muscle of his face; suddenly its fixed and stern expression—­you could not say softened, but—­broke up all at once like a sheet of ice shivering.

“Let there be peace,” he said, sententiously.  “We forgive all the errors of your long vacation in consideration of the good it has evidently done you.  You are looking brilliantly!”

There was an unusual softness, almost a tremor, in his deep voice as he spoke the last words, and a look in his bold eyes that many trained coquettes would have shrunk from—­a look that I should be sorry and angry to see turned on any woman in whom I felt an interest—­a look such as Selim Pasha might wear as the Arnauts defile into his harem-court, bringing the fair Georgians home.

Flora Bellasys only smiled in saucy triumph.

“You say you never pay compliments,” she answered, “and I always try to believe you.  We will suppose this one is only the truth extorted.  My glove—­thank you.”  The same smile was on her lip as she turned her head once in her haughty progress to the door.

As Guy sat down again, and filled a huge glass with claret, I heard him mutter between his teeth, “Royale, quand meme!”

“Close up, gentlemen, close up!” broke in the cheery voice of our rare old host.  “Livingstone, if you begin back-handing already, you’ll never be able to hold that great raking chestnut I saw your groom leading this evening.  The man looked as if he thought he would be eaten before he got in.”

“Whatever you do, drink fair,” Guy answered, laughing; “so saith the immortal Gamp.  The squire’s beginning to tremble for his ’22 wine.”

“I don’t wonder,” said Godfrey Parndon, the M.F.H.  “I’ve always observed that, after flirting disgracefully at dinner, you drink harder afterward.  It’s to drown remorse, I suppose.  So you ride that new horse of yours to-morrow?  My poor hounds!”

“Don’t be alarmed,” cried Guy; “he never kicks hounds, and I won’t let him go over them; it’s only human strangers the amiable animal can’t endure:  that’s why I call him the Axeine.  He is worth more than the L300 I gave for him.”

“Well, he nearly spoiled two grooms for Hounscott,” Parndon said.  “The stablemen at Revesby had a great beer the day they got rid of him.”

“He wouldn’t suit every one,” remarked Livingstone—­“not you, for instance, Godfrey, who always ride with a loose rein.  I was obliged to give him his gallops myself at first; he’s a devil to pull, and if he once gets away with you, you may ‘write to your friends.’  But I’ve nothing like him in my stable.”

Then the conversation became general, revolving in a circle of hound-and-horse talk, as it will do now and then in the shires.

“Guy,” whispered Forrester, as we went up stairs, “there’s a little woman here who says she used to know you very well:  won’t you go and talk to her?”