“Duck,” said Ferrall; “a double for Stephen. Lord Harry! how that man can shoot! Isn't it a pity that—”
He said no more; his pretty wife astride her thoroughbred sat silent, grey eyes fixed on the distant figures of Sylvia Landis and Siward, now shoulder deep in the reeds.
“Was it—very bad last night?” she asked in a low voice.
Ferrall shrugged. “He was not offensive; he walked steadily enough up-stairs. When I went into his room he lay on the bed as if he'd been struck by lightning. And yet—you see how he is this morning?”
“After a while,” his wife said, “it is going to alter him some day—dreadfully—isn't it, Kemp?”
“You mean—like Mortimer?”
“Yes—only Leroy was always a pig.”
As they turned their horses toward the high-road Mrs. Ferrall said: “Do you know why Sylvia isn't shooting with Howard?”
“No,” replied her husband indifferently; “do you?”
“No.” She looked out across the sunlit ocean, grave grey eyes brightening with suppressed mischief. “But I half suspect.”