He approached with solemnity, remembering his dignity, and his rheumatism, an inextinguishable light in his eye.
"They ran from Owston, my lady, and lost the fox on yon side of our bottom spinney. He must have been about done, by the way scent failed, and they couldn't pick him up again for the gentlemen crowding forrard. No, my lady, there was two sticks crossed in the earth—and the drainpipe clogged. But we found 'em one that'll take them a sight farther than some of them care to go. A real fine fox that was!" He wound up with real pride.
"And who was that on the bay?" asked Lady Henrietta. "He took the fence well, Macdonald."
"That was his Lordship," allowed Macdonald, but grudgingly. "Ah, my lady, I seen Mr. Barnaby take that very jump that day they killed their fox in the park. Clean and fine he went up, and lighted; he never smashed no top rail!"
"I know—I know," said Lady Henrietta. "The day he put out his shoulder."
"That was a rabbit hole," said Macdonald jealously. "Ah, my lady, his Lordship will never go like him!"
Dismissing Rackham with the scorn of an old servant staunch to his master, he shook his head mournfully and retreated. Lady Henrietta had turned abruptly from her cross-examination, and held out her hands to the fire.
The incident, slight as it was, and brief, coloured all their evening. Afterwards, Lady Henrietta returned to the subject, amusing herself with surmises. Had Susan noticed a man with a grizzled moustache and a furtive eye?—and another who had a trick of jerking out his elbow?—and one who rode like a jack-in-the-box, starting up continually in his stirrups? And had she seen a woman in brown, who usually backed in under the hedge at a check, talking secrets with a lank man, her shadow,—and all unwitting that there were two sides to hedges, and that voices filtered through? Insensibly, she branched into reminiscence, telling caustic histories of these Leicestershire unworthies, who were all unknown to Susan; and the girl hardly listened, sitting with her cheek on her hand and a dreaming brow.
The short interlude had impressed her. But in imagination she saw, not the splendid figure that had crashed over the hedge down yonder,—but another, one silently haunting the dim pastures where he had ridden once, sweeping out of the dusk, and passing into the dusk again. The swift scene came back to her, with its wild rush of life, hounds, and horsemen,—only, instead of his cousin, she pictured Barnaby, to whose memory she had dedicated herself.
It was wearing late. Soon Lady Henrietta would interrupt herself, breaking off with a remorseful brusqueness, and order her off to bed. How quiet it was in the library, that vast, comfortable room! How safe she felt, and how sleepy, only dreaming, not thinking of anything.