"Pay the rent," grumbled the squire; "I could have done that myself, if I'd sold all the game, and never given a head to man or woman on the place."
"Then why didn't you, Dad?"
"Why didn't I, girl? Well then, it's just because I suppose I've always belonged to 'the stupid party,' thank God for it."
Poor old Lowry was a red-hot Tory, without any Liberal instincts whatever, a fact which sufficiently accounted for the mess he had made of his life. And yet, somehow, the men who dared still to touch their hats to this reprehensible old robber of the public lands, did so with a smile in their eyes more hearty than the smirk they gave to his successor, Mr Preece.
Since the first day we met her, a change has come over Kate. The grey-blue eyes are just as beautiful, but there is less sparkle in them; the lips are just as sweet, sweeter it may be, but the dimple has gone. In the last few months she has seen more of the seamy and shabby side of life than she had even guessed at in the twenty sunny years which went before.
I don't think the squire has any suspicion of it, and Kate has neither mother nor sister to tell it to, but her poor little heart has had its stoutness tried a good deal of late. When Kate was queen at the Hall, gallant George Vernon, somewhile captain of Hussars, and at present master of the hounds and Kate's very distant cousin, had remembered the tie of kinship to the bright young beauty quite as often as duty required. Now his visits were like angel's visits in number and, to the proud Kate, far less welcome.
George Vernon was no snob, but then Kate, the hostess at the Hall, the reigning queen in the hunting-field, and Kate without a horse to her name, in a cottage and out of the world altogether, were very different persons, and George unconsciously showed that he felt the change. Though man is fickle, perhaps George would not have allowed his admiration for his cousin to cool so suddenly had there not been attractions elsewhere.
Miss Preece (the daughter of the new tenant at the Hall) would have passed as a pretty woman anywhere. If lemon-coloured locks, an abundant fringe, bright colour, and the full, tempting figure of a young Juno, make beauty, then Polly Preece was a belle. If reckless riding and a smart habit make a horsewoman, Polly Preece was a very Amazon.
True she had never had a fall; true her horses cost three hundred guineas apiece, and were clever enough to jump through hoops at a circus, even though they had ten stone of fair humanity hung on to their tortured mouths; and true, too, that though Polly laughed often (and showed in doing so as dazzling a set of teeth as ever disappointed a dentist), few people owed even a smile to any wit of hers.
But the Bruisers (as the men of the Gonaway hounds were called) voted her a right good sort, if only she would give them a little more time at their fences and not always pick the tenderest part of a man to jump upon.