‘I think you will find Mabel still at Matching,’ said Tregear on their way up.  ‘She will wait for you I fancy.’

‘I don’t know why she should wait for me,’ said Silverbridge almost angrily.

‘I thought that you and she were fast friends.’

’I suppose we are—­after a fashion.  She might wait for you perhaps.’

‘I think she would,—­if I could go there.’

’You are much thicker with her than ever I was.  You went to see her at Grex,—­when nobody else was there.’

‘Is Miss Cassewary nobody?’

‘Next door to it,’ said Silverbridge, half jealous of the favours shown to Tregear.

‘I thought,’ said Tregear, ’that there should be a closer intimacy between you and her.’

‘I don’t know why you should think so.’

’Had you ever had any such idea yourself?

’I haven’t any now,—­so there may be an end of it, I don’t think a fellow ought to be cross-questioned on such a subject.’

‘Then I am very sorry for Mabel,’ said Tregear.  This was uttered solemnly, so that Silverbridge found himself debarred from making any flippant answer.  He could not altogether defend himself.  He had been quite justified, he thought, in changing his mind, but he did not like to awn that he had changed it so quickly.

‘I think we had better not talk any more about it,’ he said, after pausing for a few moments.  After that nothing more was said between them on the subject.

Up in town Silverbridge spent two or three days pleasantly enough, while a thunderbolt was being prepared for him, or rather, in truth, two thunderbolts.  During these days he was much with Tregear, and though he could not speak freely of his own matrimonial projects, still he was brought round to give some sort of assent to the engagement between Tregear and his sister.  This new position which his friend had won for himself did in some degree operate on his judgement.  It was not perhaps that he himself imagined that Tregear as a Member of Parliament would be worthier, but that he fancied that such would be the Duke’s feelings.  The Duke had declared that Tregear was nobody.  That could hardly be said of a man who had a seat in the House of Commons;—­certainly could not be said by so staunch a politician as the Duke.

But had he known of those two thunderbolts he would not have enjoyed his time at the Beargarden.  The thunderbolts fell upon him in the shape of two letters which reached his hands at the same time, and were as follows: 

’The Bobtailed Fox, 18 December.

’My lord,

’At a meeting held in this house today in reference to the hunting of the Runnymede country, it was proposed that the management of the hounds should be taken out of the hands of Major Tifto, in consequence of certain conduct of which it is alleged he was guilty at the last Doncaster races.