“Promise me you will not stop out long, Vera,” says Sir John to her as they go side by side down the drive.  “You look white and tired as it is.  Have you got a headache?”

“Yes, a little,” confesses Vera, with a blush.  “I did not sleep well.”

“This sitting up late night after night is not good for you,” says her lover, anxiously; “and there is the ball to-morrow night.”

“Yes; and I want to look my best for your mother,” she said, smiling.  “I will take care of myself, John; I will go home early in time for lunch.”

“You are always so ready to do what I ask you.  Oh, Vera, how good you are! how little I deserve such a treasure!”

“Don’t,” she answers, almost sharply, whilst an expression of pain contracts her brow for an instant.  “Don’t say such things to me, John; don’t call me good.”

John Kynaston looks at her fondly.  “I will not call you anything you don’t wish,” he says, gently, “but I am free to think it, Vera!”

The first covert is successfully drawn without much delay.  A fox is found, and breaks away across the open, and a short but sharp burst of fifteen or twenty minutes follows.  The field is an unusually large one, and there are many out who are not in it at all.  Beatrice, however, is well up, and so is Herbert Pryme, who is not likely to be far from her side.  Close behind them follows Sir John Kynaston, and Mrs. Romer, who is well mounted upon one of Edwin Miller’s horses, keeps well up with the rest.

Vera never quite knew how it was that somehow or other she got thrown out of that short but exciting run.  She was on the wrong side of the covert to begin with; several men were near her, but they were all strangers, and at the time “Gone away!” was shouted, there was no one to tell her which way to take.  Two men took the left side of the copse, three others turned to the right.  Vera followed the latter, and found that the hounds must have gone in the opposite direction, for when she got round the wood not a trace of them was to be seen.

She did not know the country well, and she hardly knew which way to turn.  It seemed to her, however, that by striking across a small field to the left of her she would cut off a corner, and eventually come up with the hounds again.

She turned her mare short round, and put her at a big straggling hedge which she had no fears of her being unable to compass.  There was, however, more of a drop on the further side than she had counted upon, and in some way, as the mare landed, floundering on the further side, something gave way, and she found that her stirrup-leather had broken.

Vera pulled up and looked about her helplessly.  She found herself in a small spinney of young birch-trees, filling up the extremity of a triangular field into which she had come.  Not a sign of the hounds, or, indeed, of any living creature was to be seen in any direction.  She did not feel inclined to go on—­or even to go back home with her broken stirrup-leather.  It occurred to her that she would get off and see what she could do towards patching it together herself.