The two ladies came forth to the door to see the gentlemen mount and depart.
Sir Paget got into his saddle with some difficulty, as the bay hunter swayed round and round, laid its ears back, and looked askance at him, with red and bloodshot eyes.
Eveline knew not of her brother's calamity, and neither did Sir Paget, for none had spoken of Egypt or Egyptian news, and no one at Hurdell Hall was particularly interested in the Black Watch, herself excepted; but she felt a mysterious and unaccountable prevision of coming evil, and once more drew near to offer her pretty hand to Sir Paget, doing so with affected playfulness, as the eyes of others were admiringly upon her; but he, giving full rein to his thoughts about that dead Cameron, whom she had loved and he hated, stooped from his saddle, and said to her, with a bland smile meant also for other eyes,
'I have read, Lady Puddicombe, that "nothing exalts a man so much in a woman's mind as his dying. Look at the affection of widows as compared with that of wives." Ah, you are sorrowful, no doubt; but sorrow takes a long while to kill anyone.'
She knew well what he meant. Her pale cheek crimsoned, and she turned without a word, deeming it both absurd and cruel that he should thus be retrospectively jealous.
The hunters rode merrily off, all in high spirits, save Sir Paget, who jerked away with his head and was disposed to sulk, for the visit to Hurdell Hall had wrought no change on Eveline; thus he did not, like his companions, enjoy the delightful sense of rest and peace in the cool morning ride to covert.
The country was silent; ploughmen and shepherds were, as yet, scarcely abroad; and the full-fed cattle lay couched on the damp grass that glistened with dew, and from amid which their breaths rose like silvery steam, and ere long the pack was in sight—Grasper, Pilot, Holdfast, Catch, and all the rest of them—
'With tails high mounted, ears hung low, and throats
With a whole gamut filled, of heavenly notes'
—at least in the estimation of the huntsmen.
Ere long the pack was put into the covert, and stirrup leathers were tightened and readjusted in hot haste, but with the hunting, the whipping of unbroken hounds that took to running after sheep, the gallops over a few fields to get up an appetite for an early luncheon at the Squire of Furzydown's, the 'chopping' of cubs, our story has nothing to do, save in so far as one episode of the day is concerned.