He rode at an easy pace within sight of the home of his treasure, and his back turned to it.  Presently there rose a cry from below.  Mr. George looked about.  The party of horsemen hallooed:  Mr. George yoicked.  Rose set her horse to gallop up; Seymour Jocelyn cried ‘fox,’ and gave the view; hearing which Mr. George shouted, and seemed inclined to surrender; but the fun seized him, and, standing up in his stirrups, he gathered his coat-tails in a bunch, and waggled them with a jolly laugh, which was taken up below, and the clamp of hoofs resounded on the turf as Mr. George led off, after once more, with a jocose twist in his seat, showing them the brush mockingly.  Away went fox, and a mad chase began.  Seymour acted as master of the hunt.  Rose, Evan, Drummond, and Mrs. Evremonde and Dorothy, skirted to the right, all laughing, and full of excitement.  Harry bellowed the direction from above.  The ladies in the carriage, with Lady Jocelyn and Andrew, watched them till they flowed one and all over the shoulder of the down.

‘And who may the poor hunted animal be?’ inquired the Countess.

‘George Uplift,’ said Lady Jocelyn, pulling out her watch.  ’I give him twenty minutes.’

‘Providence speed him!’ breathed the Countess, with secret fervour.

‘Oh, he hasn’t a chance,’ said Lady Jocelyn.  ’The squire keeps wretched beasts.’

‘Is there not an attraction that will account for his hasty capture?’ said the Countess, looking tenderly at Miss Carrington, who sat a little straighter, and the Countess, hating manifestations of stiff-backedness, could not forbear adding:  ’I am at war with my sympathies, which should be with the poor brute flying from his persecutors.’

She was in a bitter state of trepidation, or she would have thought twice before she touched a nerve of the enamoured lady, as she knew she did in calling her swain a poor brute, and did again by pertinaciously pursuing: 

‘Does he then shun his captivity?’

‘Touching a nerve’ is one of those unforgivable small offences which, in our civilized state, produce the social vendettas and dramas that, with savage nations, spring from the spilling of blood.  Instead of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, we demand a nerve for a nerve.  ’Thou hast touched me where I am tender thee, too, will I touch.’

Miss Carrington had been alarmed and hurt at the strange evasion of Mr. George; nor could she see the fun of his mimicry of the fox and his flight away from instead of into her neighbourhood.  She had also, or she now thought it, remarked that when Mr. George had been spoken of casually, the Countess had not looked a natural look.  Perhaps it was her present inflamed fancy.  At any rate the Countess was offensive now.  She was positively vulgar, in consequence, to the mind of Miss Carrington, and Miss Carrington was drawn to think of a certain thing Ferdinand Laxley had said he had heard from the mouth of this lady’s brother when ale was in him.  Alas! how one seed of a piece of folly will lurk and sprout to confound us; though, like the cock in the eastern tale, we peck up zealously all but that one!