"Yes to both questions; and more than at the meet, I fancy. She and her thorough-bred, Whirlwind, will lead you all. Her scarlet habit and 'red roan steed' are as well known in the country as the duke's hounds, and her bright eyes and dashing style have taken by storm the hearts of half the fox-hunting squires of Devonshire."
She laughed a little maliciously. Truth to tell, not being quite sure that her game was safely wired, and dreading this Amazonian Miss Hunsden as a prospective rival, she was nothing loath to prejudice the fastidious young baronet beforehand, even while seeming to praise her.
"I am surprised that you have not heard of her," she said. "Sir Harcourt Helford and Mr. Cholmondeley actually fought a duel about her, and it ended in her telling them to their faces they were a pair of idiots, and flatly refusing both. 'The Hunsden' is the toast of the country."
Sir Everard shuddered.
"From all such the gods deliver us! You honor Miss Hunsden with your deepest interest, I think, Lady Louise?
"Yes, she is such an oddity. Her wandering life, I presume, accounts for it; but she is altogether unlike any girl I ever know. I am certain," with a little malicious glance, "she will be your style, Sir Everard."
"And as I don't in the least know what my style is, perhaps you may be right."
Lady Louise bit her lip—it was a rebuff, she fancied, for her detraction. And then Lady Carteret gave that mysterious signal, and the ladies rose and swept away in billows of silk to the drawing-room, and the gentlemen had the talk to themselves "across the walnuts and the wine."
To one gentleman present the interim before rejoining the ladies was unmitigatedly dull, even though the talk ran on his favorite topics—-horse-flesh and hunting. He was in love, he thought complacently, and Lady Louise's eyes had sparkled to-day and her smiles had flashed their bewildering brightness upon him more radiantly than ever before.
"How pleased my mother will be!" Sir Everard thought. "I will ask Lady Louise this very night. An earl's daughter—though a bankrupt—is a fitting mate for a Kingsland."