Just then she saw Juliana bend her brows at another person.  This was George Uplift, who shook his head, and indicated a shrewd-eyed, thin, middle-aged man, of a lawyer-like cast; and then Juliana nodded, and George Uplift touched his arm, and glanced hurriedly behind for champagne.  The Countess’s eyes dwelt on the timid young squire most affectionately.  You never saw a fortress more unprepared for dread assault.

‘Hem!’ was heard, terrific.  But the proper pause had evidently not yet come, and now to prevent it the Countess strained her energies and tasked her genius intensely.  Have you an idea of the difficulty of keeping up the ball among a host of ill-assorted, stupid country people, who have no open topics, and can talk of nothing continuously but scandal of their neighbours, and who, moreover, feel they are not up to the people they are mixing with?  Darting upon Seymour Jocelyn, the Countess asked touchingly for news of the partridges.  It was like the unlocking of a machine.  Seymour was not blythe in his reply, but he was loud and forcible; and when he came to the statistics—­oh, then you would have admired the Countess!—­for comparisons ensued, braces were enumerated, numbers given were contested, and the shooting of this one jeered at, and another’s sure mark respectfully admitted.  And how lay the coveys?  And what about the damage done by last winter’s floods?  And was there good hope of the pheasants?  Outside this latter the Countess hovered.  Twice the awful ‘Hem!’ was heard.  She fought on.  She kept them at it.  If it flagged she wished to know this or that, and finally thought that, really, she should like herself to try one shot.  The women had previously been left behind.  This brought in the women.  Lady Jocelyn proposed a female expedition for the morrow.

‘I believe I used to be something of a shot, formerly,’ she said.

‘You peppered old Tom once, my lady,’ remarked Andrew, and her ladyship laughed, and that foolish Andrew told the story, and the Countess, to revive her subject, had to say:  ‘May I be enrolled to shoot?’ though she detested and shrank from fire-arms.

‘Here are two!’ said the hearty presiding dame.  ’Ladies, apply immediately to have your names put down.’

The possibility of an expedition of ladies now struck Seymour vividly, and said he:  ’I ‘ll be secretary’; and began applying to the ladies for permission to put down their names.  Many declined, with brevity, muttering, either aloud or to themselves, ‘unwomanly’; varied by ‘unladylike’:  some confessed cowardice; some a horror of the noise close to their ears; and there was the plea of nerves.  But the names of half-a-dozen ladies were collected, and then followed much laughter, and musical hubbub, and delicate banter.  So the ladies and gentlemen fell one and all into the partridge pit dug for them by the Countess:  and that horrible ‘Hem!’ equal in force and terror to the roar of artillery preceding the