'Exhaust your feelings on your racket, and reflect that you see a man released from bondage.'
'Is that philosophy or high-faluting?' she said in a teasing tone as the game began.
The Ruthvens had very blue blood in their veins, but as there were nine of the present generation, they possessed little beyond their long pedigree; even the head of the family, Lord Ronnisglen, being forced to live as a soldier, leaving his castle to grouse shooters. His seven brothers had fared mostly in distant lands as they could, and his mother had found a home, together with her youngest child, at Lescombe, where her eldest was the wife of Sir John Delmar. Lady Ronnisglen was an invalid, confined to the house, and Lady Delmar had daughters fast treading on the heels of Annabella, so christened, but always called Annaple after the old Scottish queens, her ancestors. She had been May Egremont's chief friend ever since her importation at twelve years old, and the intimacy had been promoted by her mother and sister. Indeed, the neighbourhood had looked on with some amusement at the competition ascribed to Lady Delmar and to the wealthy parvenu, Mrs. West, for the heir-presumptive of Bridgefield Egremont.
Annaple's lightness and dexterity rendered her the best of the lady tennis-players, and the less practised Ursula found herself defeated in the match, in spite of a partner whose play was superior to Mark's, and with whom she shyly walked off to eat ices.
'I see,' said Annaple, 'it is a country-town edition of May. I shan't blunder between them again.'
'She will polish,' said Mark, 'but she is not equal to her mother.'
'Whom I have not seen yet. Ah, there's Mr. Egremont! Why, he looks quite renovated!'
'Well he may be!'
'But Mark, not to hurt your feelings, he must have behaved atrociously.'
'I'm not going to deny it,' said Mark.