'I fear more the boughs of the trees, they are so apt to tear one's hair,' replied the flushed girl, breathlessly, as she flew, her dark blue skirt and veil streaming behind her; and now and then a cry of terror escaped her, as a horse and its rider went floundering into some marshy pool, though generally with no worse result than a mud bath.
At length the beeches are left behind, while the deer shoots on past Wilton Park, anon over Chalfont Brook, till she reaches the stable in a farmyard, and there is captured and made safe, and so ends the day, after which there is nothing left for the breathless and blown, who have followed her thus far, but to ride slowly back some fifteen miles to Slough.
Less occupied by interest in the hunt than with each other, Bevil Goring and Miss Cheyne had gradually dropped out of it, and at the time of the conversation with which this chapter opens were riding slowly along a narrow green lane that led—they had not yet begun to consider in what precise direction.
CHAPTER II.
AT CHILCOTE.
'The hounds threw off at half-past eleven, and the afternoon is far advanced,' said Miss Cheyne, with a little anxiety of manner. 'I must take the nearest cut home.'
'Thither, of course, I shall do myself the honour of escorting you.'
'Thanks—so much.'
She could not say otherwise, as she could neither decline his escort nor with propriety ride home alone; yet she gave a glance rather helplessly around her, as all her immediate friends—and one more especially, whose escort her father wished her to have had—were now left miles behind, having 'come to grief' at the first fence, and were now she knew not where.
But then she thought it was not her fault that they had dropped out of the hunt, or out of their saddles perhaps.