On the hall steps stood Flora Bellasys—Penthesilea in a wide-awake and plume; a dozen men were round her, striving emulously for a word or a smile, and she held her own gallantly with them all. She was waiting patiently till Guy had lighted an obstinate cigar, and was ready to mount her. He understood putting her up better than any one else, she said. Perhaps he did; but, though he swung her into the saddle with one wave of his mighty arm as lightly as Lochinvar could have done, the arrangement of the skirt and stirrup seemed a problem hardly to be solved.
If there was any truth in the old Courland superstition that the display of a lady's ankle to the hunters before they started brought them luck, we ought to have had the run of the season that day.
He rode by her side, too, as near as the plunges of the chestnut would allow, till we reached the gorse that we were to draw; once there, the stronger passion prevailed. Aphroditè hid her face, and the great goddess Artemis claimed her own. As the first hound whimpered, he drew off toward a corner, where a big fence would give a chance of shaking off the crowd, and I do not think he turned his head till the fox went away.
The last thing I remember there was the anxious look in two beautiful hazel eyes as they gazed after the Axeine, charging his second fence with the rush of an express train.
The fétiche did not fail us; we had a wonderful run, of which only five men saw the end. I confess, the second brook stopped me and many others. Forrester got over with a fall; but they were preparing to break up the fox, when he came up first of the second flight.
Guy came home in great spirits; he had been admirably carried. He and the first whip, a ten-stone man, were head and head at the last fence, while the hounds were rolling over their fox, a hundred yards farther, in the open.
After dinner he amused himself with teasing his cousin. At last he asked her if she would lend him Bella Donna to hack to cover, as his own favorite was rather lame.
Miss Raymond's indignation was superb; for, be it known, she was prouder of the said animal than of any thing else in the world.
She (the mare, not the lady) was a bright bay, with black points, quite thorough-bred, and as handsome as a picture. Livingstone had bought her out of a training-stable, and had given her to his cousin, after having broken her into a perfect light-weight hunter.
One of the few extravagances in which Mr. Raymond indulged his daughter was allowing her to take Bella Donna wherever she went.