breeches, and had his red coat ready at the fire while he sat at breakfast.  The meet was fifteen miles off and he had sent on his hunter, intending to travel thither in his dog cart.  Just as he was cutting himself a slice of beef the postman came, and of course he read his letter.  He read it with the carving knife in his hand, and then he stood gazing at his mother.  “What is it, Larry?” she asked; “is anything wrong?”

“Wrong,—­well; I don’t know,” he said.  “I don’t know what you call wrong.  I shan’t hunt; that’s all.”  Then he threw aside the knife and pushed away his plate and marched out of the room with the open letter in his hand.

Mrs. Twentyman knew very well of his love,—­as indeed did nearly all Dillsborough; but she had heard nothing of the two months and did not connect the letter with Mary Masters.  Surely he must have lost a large sum of money.  That was her idea till she saw him again late in the afternoon.

He never went near the hounds that day or near his business.  He was not then man enough for either.  But he walked about the fields, keeping out of sight of everybody.  It was all over now.  It must be all over when she wrote to him a letter like that.  Why had she tempted him to thoughts of happiness and success by that promise of two months’ grace?  He supposed that he was not good enough;—­or that she thought he was not good enough.  Then he remembered his acres, and his material comforts, and tried to console himself by reflecting that Mary Masters might very well do worse in the world.  But there was no consolation in it.  He had tried his best because he had really loved the girl.  He had failed, and all the world,—­ all his world, would know that he had failed.  There was not a man in the club,—­hardly a man in the hunt,—­who was not aware that he had offered to Mary Masters.  During the last two months he had not been so reticent as was prudent, and had almost boasted to Fred Botsey of success.  And then how was he to live at Chowton Farm without Mary Masters as his wife?  As he returned home he almost made up his mind that he would not continue to live at Chowton Farm.

He came back through Dillsborough Wood; and there, prowling about, he met Goarly.  “Well, Mr. Twentyman,” said the man, “I am making it all straight now with his Lordship.”

“I don’t care what you’re doing,” said Larry in his misery.  “You are an infernal blackguard and that’s the best of you.”

CHAPTER VIII

Chowton Farm for Sale.

John Morton had returned to town soon after his walk into Dillsborough and had there learned from different sources that both Arabella Trefoil and Lord Rufford had gone or were going to Mistletoe.  He had seen Lord Augustus who, though he could tell him nothing else about his daughter, had not been slow to inform him that she was going to the house of her noble uncle.  When Morton had spoken to him very seriously about