‘Mr. Lydiard is in Bevisham?’ Mrs. Wardour-Devereux remarked.

‘I know the girl,’ growled Mr. Lespel.  ’She comes with that rascally doctor and a bobtail of tea-drinking men and women and their brats to Northeden Heath—­my ground.  There they stand and sing.’

’Hymns?’inquired Mr. Culbrett.

’I don’t know what they sing.  And when it rains they take the liberty to step over my bank into my plantation.  Some day I shall have them stepping into my house.’

‘Yes, it’s Mr. Lydiard; I’m sure of the man’s name,’ Palmet replied to Mrs. Wardour-Devereux.

‘We met him in Spain the year before last,’ she observed to Cecilia.

The ‘we’ reminded Palmet that her husband was present.

‘Ah, Devereux, I didn’t see you,’ he nodded obliquely down the table.  ’By the way, what’s the grand procession?  I hear my man Davis has come all right, and I caught sight of the top of your coach-box in the stableyard as I came in.  What are we up to?’

‘Baskelett writes, it’s to be for to-morrow morning at ten-the start.’  Mr. Wardour-Devereux addressed the table generally.  He was a fair, huge, bush-bearded man, with a voice of unvarying bass:  a squire in his county, and energetic in his pursuit of the pleasures of hunting, driving, travelling, and tobacco.

’Old Bask’s the captain of us?  Very well, but where do we drive the teams?  How many are we?  What’s in hand?’

Cecilia threw a hurried glance at her hostess.

Luckily some witling said, ‘Fours-in-hand!’ and so dryly that it passed for humour, and gave Mrs. Lespel time to interpose.  ’You are not to know till to-morrow, Ernest.’

Palmet had traced the authorship of the sally to Mr. Algy Borolick, and crowned him with praise for it.  He asked, ‘Why not know till to-morrow?’ A word in a murmur from Mr. Culbrett, ‘Don’t frighten the women,’ satisfied him, though why it should he could not have imagined.

Mrs. Lespel quitted the breakfast-table before the setting in of the dangerous five minutes of conversation over its ruins, and spoke to her husband, who contested the necessity for secresy, but yielded to her judgement when it was backed by Stukely Culbrett.  Soon after Lord Palmet found himself encountered by evasions and witticisms, in spite of the absence of the ladies, upon every attempt he made to get some light regarding the destination of the four-in-hands next day.

‘What are you going to do?’ he said to Mr. Devereux, thinking him the likeliest one to grow confidential in private.

‘Smoke,’ resounded from the depths of that gentleman.

Palmet recollected the ground of division between the beautiful brunette and her lord—­his addiction to the pipe in perpetuity, and deemed it sweeter to be with the lady.

She and Miss Halkett were walking in the garden.

Miss Halkett said to him:  ’How wrong of you to betray the secrets of your friend!  Is he really making way?’