“Girls have to have pluck if they don’t mean to be sat upon;—­a great deal more than men.  The idea of telling me that I was to go to church as though I were twelve years old!”

“What would she say if she knew that you were walking here with me?”

“I don’t care what she’d say.  I dare say she walked with somebody once;—­only I should think the somebody must have found it very dull.”

“Does she know that you’re to hunt to-morrow?”

“I haven’t told her and don’t mean.  I shall just come down in my habit and hat and say nothing about it.  At what time must we start?”

“The carriages are ordered for half-past nine.  But I’m afraid you haven’t clearly before your eyes all the difficulties which are incidental to hunting.”

“What do you mean?”

“It looks as like a black frost as anything I ever saw in my life.”

“But we should go?”

“The horses won’t be there if there is a really hard frost.  Nobody would stir.  It will be the first question I shall ask the man when he comes to me, and if there have been seven or eight degrees of frost I shan’t get up.”

“How am I to know?”

“My man shall tell your maid.  But everybody will soon know all about it.  It will alter everything.”

“I think I shall go mad.”

“In white satin?”

“No;—­in my habit and hat.  It will be the hardest thing, after all!  I ought to have insisted on going to Holcombe Cross on Friday.  The sun is shining now.  Surely it cannot freeze.”

“It will be uncommonly ill-bred if it does.”

But, after all, the hunting was not the main point.  The hunting had been only intended as an opportunity; and if that were to be lost,—­in which case Lord Rufford would no doubt at once leave Mistletoe,—­there was the more need for using the present hour, the more for using even the present minute.  Though she had said that the sun was shining, it was the setting sun, and in another half hour the gloom of the evening would be there.  Even Lord Rufford would not consent to walk about with her in the dark.  “Oh, Lord Rufford,” she said, “I did so look forward to your giving me another lead.”  Then she put her hand upon his arm and left it there.

“It would have been nice,” said he, drawing her hand a little on, and remembering as he did so his own picture of himself on the cliff with his sister holding his coat-tails.

“If you could possibly know,” she said, “the condition I am in.”

“What condition?”

“I know that I can trust you.”

“Oh dear, yes.  If you mean about telling, I never tell anything.”

“That’s what I do mean.  You remember that man at your place?”

“What man?  Poor Caneback?”

“Oh dear no!  I wish they could change places because then he could give me no more trouble.”

“That’s wishing him to be dead, whoever he is.”