She was hardly the woman that one would have expected to meet as a friend in the drawing-room of Lady Chiltern.  Lord Chiltern was perhaps a little rough, but Lady Chiltern was all that a mother, a wife, and a lady ought to be.  She probably felt that some little apology ought to be made for Mrs Spooner.  ’I hope you like hunting,’ she said to Silverbridge.

‘Best of all things,’ he said enthusiastically.

’Because you know this is Castle Nimrod, in which nothing is allowed to interfere with the one great business in life.’

‘It’s like that, is it?’

’Quite like that.  Lord Chiltern has taken up hunting as his duty in life, and he does it with his might and main.  Not to have a good day is a misery to him;—­not for himself but because he feels that he is responsible.  We had one blank day last year, and I thought he never would recover it.  It was that unfortunate Trumpington Wood.’

‘How he will hate me.’

’Not if you praise the hounds judiciously.  And then there is a Mr Spooner coming here tonight.  He is the first-lieutenant.  He understands all about the foxes, and all about the farmers.  He has got a wife.’

‘Does she understand anything?’

’She understands him.  She is coming too.  They have not been married long, and he never goes anywhere without her.’

‘Does she ride?’

’Well; yes.  I never go myself now because I have so much of it all at home.  But I fancy she does ride a good deal.  She will talk hunting too.  If Chiltern were to leave the country I think they ought to make her master.  Perhaps you’ll think her rather odd; but really she is a very good woman.’

‘I am sure I will like her.’

’I hope you will.  You know Mr Finn.  He is here.  He and my husband are very old friends.  And Adelaide Maule is your cousin.  She hunts too.  And so does Mr Maule,—­only not quite so energetically.  I think that is all we shall have.’

Immediately after that all the guests came in at once, and a discussion was heard as they were passing through the hall.  ’No;—­ that wasn’t it,’ said Mrs Spooner loudly.  ’I don’t care what Dick said.’  Dick Rabbit was the first whip, and seemed to have been much exercised with the matter now under dispute.  ’The fox never went into Grobby Gorse at all.  I was there and saw Sappho give him a line down the bank.’

‘I think he must have gone into the gorse, my dear,’ said her husband.  ‘The earth was open, you know.’

’I tell you she didn’t.  You weren’t there, and you can’t know.  I’m sure it was a vixen by her running.  We ought to have killed that fox, my Lord.’  Then Mrs Spooner made her obeisance to her hostess.  Perhaps she was rather slow in doing this, but the greatness of the subject had been the cause.  These are matters so important, that the ordinary civilities of the world should not stand in their way.

‘What do you say, Chiltern?’ asked the husband.