"Yes?" Lucy smiled up at him quite brightly, but her mind was absorbed in the scene below her: the Duke, the great potentate of the neighbourhood, had come up to Mrs. Rebell—she was now following him towards the victoria in which sat the ample Duchess, and Boringdon had ridden off, galloping his mare down the steep rough road where the Master, with anxious eyes, was watching the hounds slipping in and out of the wood. Lucy was rather puzzled. How was it that this strange lady, who had only arrived at the Priory some three weeks ago, and who never came into the village—she had been out driving when Mrs. Boringdon had called on her—knew everybody? She said suddenly, "I did not know that you knew Mrs. Rebell: we have none of us seen her excepting in church."
"I can't say I know her, but old Cousin Tom has made great friends with her. You know she's been riding Saucebox every morning, and they, she and Boringdon, always go past Laxgrove about twelve o'clock. The first morning there was quite a scene. The mare didn't quite understand Mrs. Rebell, I suppose, for a steam roller came up, and in a minute she was all over the place. Mrs. Rebell sat tight, but it gave her rather a turn, and Tom made her come into the house. Then yesterday—you know what a down-pour there was—well, she and Boringdon came in again. I was rather glad to see them, for he and Tom have had rather an unpleasantness over the Laxgrove shooting. However, now, thanks to this Mrs. Rebell, they've quite made it up. She's a nice-looking woman, isn't she?—quite the kind of figure for a showy beast like Saucebox!"
But Lucy made no answer: could it be, so thought Laxton uneasily, that she did not like to hear another woman praised? To some girls, the young man would never have said anything complimentary concerning another lady, but Lucy Kemp was different; that was the delightful thing about Lucy,—both about the girl and her mother.
Old Tom, sitting over the smoking-room fire the evening before, had told his young kinsman to give up all thought of Lucy Kemp. "Whoever you marry now, it will be all the same about ten years hence!" so the cynical bachelor had observed, but then, what did Tom Laxton know about it? The younger man was well aware, in a general sense, that this was true of many men and their wives. It would probably be true of him were he to choose, and to be chosen, from among the group of pleasant girls with whom he had flirted, danced, and played games during the last few months. But with Lucy, ah! no,—Lucy Kemp had become a part of his life, and he could not imagine existence without her somewhere in the background. Of course, to his old cousin, to Tom Laxton, Miss Kemp was simply a quiet rather dull girl who could not even ride really well—ride as women ought to ride if they hunted at all. The old sportsman had only two feminine ideals,—that of the loud, jolly, hail-fellow-well-met sort of girl, or else the stand-offish, delicate, high-bred sort of woman, like this Mrs. Rebell.
Lucy was looking straight before her, seeing nothing, thinking much. Oliver's absence from the Grange was now explained: he had been riding every morning with Mrs. Rebell, putting off the dull hours which he had to spend in the estate office till the afternoons. The girl thought it quite reasonable that Boringdon should ride with Madame Sampiero's guest, in fact, that sort of thing was one of those nondescript duties of which he had sometimes complained to her as having been more than he had bargained for. But how strange that he had not asked her, Lucy Kemp, to come too! When a certain girl cousin of Oliver's was at the Cottage, the three young people often enjoyed delightful riding expeditions,—in fact, that was how Lucy had first come to know Oliver so well.
"They've found at last! This way, Lucy!—"
Lucy woke up as if from a dream. The sharp unmistakable cry of Bluebell, one of the oldest hounds in the pack, broke on her ears. She and Laxton galloped down to the left—then waited—Laxton smiling broadly as the whole field swept past them just below, the men jostling one another in their eagerness to get first to a gate giving access to a large meadow which enclosed a stretch of down.
Rather on one side Lucy saw Mrs. Rebell and Boringdon, and Oliver—quiet, prudent Oliver—was actually giving Saucebox a lead over a low hedge! A group of town-folk from Halnakeham clapped their hands on seeing the lady clear the obstacle. Laxton laughed. "Miss Vipen would talk about circus performances, eh! Lucy?" He had never liked Boringdon, the two men had nothing in common. "But, of course, Mrs. Rebell may have told him she wanted to jump. They were doing that sort of thing yesterday down at Laxgrove, and I must say I thought it very sensible of Boringdon."
But in point of fact the hounds had not found. They had struck a strong drag in the lower end of the cover, but, after running for only thirty or forty yards, scent had quickly failed, and a few minutes afterwards the majority of the field had reappeared near the old gate on the crest of the hill.