gold sherry-flash, studded with turquoises, just ordered for her from Regent Street, which, however, she ungraciously contemned, because she thought it had only cost twenty guineas; anchoring the victimized Seraph beside her by an adroit “Ah! by the way, Rock, give Zu-Zu one of your rose-scented papelitos; she’s been wild to smoke them”; and leaving the Zu-Zu content at securing a future Duke, was free to canter back and flirt on the offside of Vivandiere, till the “signal,” the “cast,” made with consummate craft, the waving of the white sterns among the brushwood, the tightening of girths, the throwing away of cigars, the challenge, the whimper, and the “stole away!” sent the field headlong down the course after as fine a long-legged greyhound fox as ever carried a brush.

Away he went in a rattling spin, breaking straight at once for the open, the hounds on the scent like mad:  with a tally-ho that thundered through the cloudless, crisp, cold, glittering noon, the field dashed off pell-mell; the violet habit of her ladyship, and the azure skirts of the Zu-Zu foremost of all in the rush through the spinneys while Cecil on the King, and the Seraph on a magnificent white weight-carrier, as thoroughbred and colossal as himself, led the way with them.  The scent was hot as death in the spinneys, and the pack raced till nothing but a good one could live with them; few but good ones, however, were to be found with the Quorn, and the field held together superbly over the first fence, and on across the grassland, the game old fox giving no sign of going to covert, but running straight as a crow flies, while the pace grew terrific.

“Beats cock-fighting!” cried the Zu-Zu, while her blue skirts fluttered in the wind, as she lifted Cecil’s brown mare, very cleverly, over a bilberry hedge, and set her little white teeth with a will on the Seraph’s attar-of-rose cigarette.  Lady Guenevere heard the words as Vivandiere rose in the air with the light bound of a roe, and a slight superb dash of scorn came into her haughty eyes for the moment; she never seemed to know that “that person” in the azure habit even existed, but the contempt awoke in her, and shone in her glance, while she rode on as that fair leader of the Belvoir and Pytchley alone could ride over the fallows.

The steam was on at full pressure, the hounds held close to his brush,—­heads up, sterns down,—­running still straight as an arrow over the open, past coppice and covert, through gorse and spinney, without a sign of the fox making for shelter.  Fence and double, hedge and brook, soon scattered the field; straying off far and wide, and coming to grief with lots of “downers,” it grew select, and few but the crack men could keep the hounds in view.  “Catch ’em who can,” was the one mot d’ordre, for they were literally racing; the line-hunters never losing the scent a second, as the fox, taking to dodging, made all the trouble he could for them through the rides of the woods.  Their working was magnificent, and, heading him, they ran him round and round in a ring, viewed him for a second, and drove him out of covert once more into the pastures, while they laid on at a hotter scent and flew after him like staghounds.