People are coming and going at a rapid rate. They nearly all seem to know each other, judging by the little nods, and “good-mornings,” and suchlike familiar greetings with which friends meet, and in which these afore-mentioned personages indulge, as they hurry by each other.
A party of horsemen and horsewomen are just riding out of the stables belonging to The Limes. They are laughing and talking merrily. We have seen two of the women before, and their names are Mrs. de Lacy Trevor and Lady Manderton. Close in attendance upon them are two smart good-looking men, whom we must introduce to the reader as Lord Charles Dartrey and the Earl of Westray. The former appears to be entirely taken up with the first-named lady, the latter—already introduced to the reader in a former chapter as Lord Altai—with the last-named one.
There is yet another pair in that cheery group that we must particularly notice. They are a man and woman, both young, both good-looking, and both unmistakably at home in the saddle. If one can judge from appearances, the woman must be about twenty-two years of age, the man perhaps five or six years her senior. Both are mounted on grey horses, and both look every inch what they are, splendid equestrians. The woman is well known in Society’s world, as also in the tiny hunting world of Melton. She is Lady Flora Desmond, and the man is handsome Captain “Jack” Delamere.
They trot through the streets at a merry pace, down past the Harborough Hotel, over the railway, away on by Wicklow Lodge, towards Burton Lazarus. It is a beautiful morning, and the sun is shining brightly on the flats that lie below. Dalby Hall, nestling amidst its woods on the far hillside, stands out distinct and clear, with the same bright sun gleaming on its gables and windows.
“What a glorious morning, Jack!” exclaims Lady Flora enthusiastically. “Why, it’s like summer, is it not?”
The others are a little on ahead, and these two have fallen in the rear. Jack looks at the speaker with a smile.
“It is a grand day, Florrie, and it suits you, too. I never saw you looking better in my life.”
She flushes up. Florrie Desmond does not care about compliments,—she values them at their worth,—but she and Jack are fast friends, and she is not quite averse to them from him. She answers, however.
“Shut up, you goose, and don’t talk nonsense.”
She is a clever woman is Flora Desmond, cleverer far than some people take her to be. Her bringing up has not been exactly like other women’s, and she has always kicked against the restraints and restrictions put upon her sex. She is the daughter of the Marquis and Marchioness of Douglasdale, and an orphan, having lost her father at an early age. Lady Douglasdale was, in her day, a very beautiful woman, a persona grata at Court, where her husband exercised the duties of Comptroller of the Household, and was a favourite with his sovereign; but after the marquis’s death she took greatly to travelling, and thus it was that Flora Ruglen, in conjunction with her twin brother Archie, saw most of the great world of Europe before she was ten years of age.