She touched the bell as she spoke.
'Oh, Dobson, I'll have my horse round in half an hour. The chestnut with the white feet, tell the groom.'
'You are going to hunt?' said Gustie.
'Yes; but I'll go to the meet without a cavalier. My chestnut is in fine form, I'm told, and I do long to have the dust blown out of my hair.'
'I cannot go with you, my pretty cousin.'
'Nobody axed you, sir,' she said, or rather sung.
Now, it happened that Antony's letter had come among others that very morning, and she had left it in her boudoir to read it a second time, but had forgotten it. It is not pleasant to write about shabby actions or disagreeable people, but at times there is no help for it.
Gustie, going to the room some time after in search of his cousin, found she had left. He lingered a little here, and his eyes fell upon the letter. He was quite unfamiliar with Antony's calligraphy—indeed, the two did not correspond, for they had nothing in common.
'Hallo!' he thought, 'a letter to Agg, and from a gentleman too! Perhaps I have a rival.'
He was fingering it now.