When Larry Twentyman received the lord’s note, which was left at Chowton Farm by Hampton’s groom, he was in the lowest depth of desolation.  He had intended to hunt that day in compliance with John Morton’s advice, but had felt himself quite unable to make the effort.  It was not only that he had been thrown over by Mary Masters, but that everybody knew that he had been thrown over.  If he had kept the matter secret, perhaps he might have borne it; but it is so hard to bear a sorrow of which all one’s neighbours are conscious.  When a man is reduced by poverty to the drinking of beer instead of wine, it is not the loss of the wine that is so heavy on him as the consciousness that those around him are aware of the reason.  And he is apt to extend his idea of this consciousness to a circle that is altogether indifferent of the fact.  That a man should fail in his love seems to him to be of all failures the most contemptible, and Larry thought that there would not be one in the field unaware of his miserable rejection.  In spite of his mother’s prayers he had refused to go, and had hung about the farm all day.

Then there came to him Lord Rufford’s note.  It had been quite unexpected, and a month or two before, when his hopes had still been high in regard to Mary Masters, would have filled him with delight.  It was the foible of his life to be esteemed a gentleman, and his poor ambition to be allowed to live among men of higher social standing than himself.  Those dinners of Lord Rufford’s at the Bush had been a special grief to him.  The young lord had been always courteous to him in the field, and he had been able, as he thought, to requite such courtesy by little attentions in the way of game preserving.  If pheasants from Dillsborough Wood ate Goarly’s wheat, so did they eat Larry Twentyman’s barley.  He had a sportsman’s heart, above complaint as to such matters, and had always been neighbourly to the lord.  No doubt pheasants and hares were left at his house whenever there was shooting in the neighbourhood, which to his mother afforded great consolation.  But Larry did not care for the pheasants and hares.  Had he so pleased he could have shot them on his own land; but he did not preserve, and, as a good neighbour, he regarded the pheasants and hares as Lord Rufford’s property.  He felt that he was behaving as a gentleman as well as a neighbour, and that he should be treated as such.  Fred Botsey had dined at the Bush with Lord Rufford, and Larry looked on Fred as in no way better than himself.

Now at last the invitation had come.  He was asked to a day’s shooting and to dine with the lord and his party at the inn.  How pleasant would it be to give a friendly nod to Runciman as he went into the room, and to assert afterwards in Botsey’s hearing something of the joviality of the evening.  Of course Hampton would be there as Hampton’s servant had brought the note, and he was very anxious to be on friendly terms with Mr. Hampton.  Next to the lord himself there was no one in the hunt who carried his head so high as young Hampton.