"You think they have quite come to nothing, Dick?"
"It looks like it. We shall know to-morrow. I still think—what I've always thought and built upon—that if he once sees you——"
"Dear Dick! But it's rather late for that now, if he has heard all about me, and has made a picture of me in his mind."
"Well, it's such a preposterous picture, that the reality can't help striking him. We won't do anything until after we know what has happened at the meet. And by the by, there's a dinner invitation for you for to-morrow evening." He told her about Mrs. Graham and gave her her note.
"That is very kind of Mrs. Graham," she said. "I forgot to tell you that I knew her sister-in-law. I'm afraid we shan't have much opportunity of talking there, Dick."
So they talked where they were for a long time, until the dusk fell and the maid came in with the lights and the tea, and Miss Dexter after her, and the result of their talk was that they felt things were not as bad as they looked. Dick's father would relent some day, and until he did they had each other.
CHAPTER X
THE MEET AT APTHORPE COMMON
The meet on Monday was at Apthorpe Common, a distance of nine miles from Kencote, and the three men appeared at breakfast in boots and breeches. The Squire always did so, and donned his red coat, with the yellow collar of the South Meadshire Hunt, when he dressed for the day. Dick came to breakfast in a tweed jacket, and Humphrey in a quilted silk smoking-coat, and both had linen aprons tied round their waists to preserve their well pipe-clayed breeches. But the Squire belonged to an older generation, having been born when boots and breeches still lingered as the normal dress of country gentlemen, and a red coat was as easy in the wearing as any other coat. He looked a fine figure of a man, as he stood up at the end of the table to read prayers to his household, and ready to go with the best if he got a horse up to his weight.