"Very much, if—I am not too sleepy to hear it; and it isn't a cornet out of tune."
"How cruel!" murmured Horace, as he passed her coffee. "You shouldn't criticise so severely when a fellow tries to please you."
"That poor dear girl really thinks I turned out into the snow last night to give her that serenade," observed Cos, with a languid laugh, when we were alone in the billiard-room. "Good, isn't it, the idea of my troubling myself?"
"Whose cracked cornet was it, then, that made that confounded row last night?" I asked.
Horace laughed again; it was rarely he was so highly amused at anything: "It was Cléante's, to be sure. He don't play badly when his hands are not numbed, poor devil! Of course he made no end of a row about going out into the snow, but I made him do it. I knew Cecil would think it was I. Women are so vain, poor things!"
It was lucky I alone was the repository of his confidence, for if Vivian had chanced to have been in the billiard-room, it is highly probable he would then and there have brained his cousin with one of the cues.
Happily he was out of the reach of temptation, in the stables, looking after Qui Vive, who had to "bide in stall," as much to that gallant bay's disquiet as to her owner's; for I don't know which of the two best loves a burst over a stiff country, or a fast twenty minutes up wind alone with the hounds when they throw up their heads.
To the stables, by an odd coincidence, Cecil, putting the irresistible black hat on the top of her chestnut braids, prevailed on Blanche to escort her, vowing (which was nearly, but not quite, the truth) that she loved the sweet pets of horses better than anything on earth. Where Cecil went, Laura made a point of going too, to keep her enemy in sight, I suppose; though Cecil, liking a fast walk on the frosty roads, a game of battledore and shuttlecock with Blanche (when we were out of the house), or anything, in short, better than working with her feet on the fender, and the Caldecott inanities or Screechington scandals in her ear, often led Laura many an unwelcome dance, and brought that luckless young lady to try at things which did not sit well upon her as they did upon the St. Aubyn, who had a knack of doing, and doing charmingly, a thousand things no other woman could have attempted. So, as Vivian and I, and some of the other men, stood in the stable-doors, smoking, and talking over the studs accommodated in the spacious stalls, a strong party of four young ladies came across the yard.
"I'm come to look at Qui Vive; will you show him to me?" said Cecil, softly. Her gentle, childlike way was the most telling of all her changing moods, but I must do her the justice to say that it was perfectly natural, she was no actress.
"With great pleasure," said Syd, very courteously, if not over-cordially; and to Qui Vive's stall Cecil went, alone in her glory, for Laura was infinitely too terrified at the sight of the bay's strong black hind legs to risk a kick from them, even to follow Syd. Helena Vivian stayed with her, and Blanche came with me to visit my hunters.