Kate Arbery had performed in such scenes, times without number, and had invariably succeeded in exciting the admiration of the field. The admiration of one unfortunate wight had developed into a passion. His name was Chilcott. The Chilcotts were hunting men from all time, and Henry Chilcott valued his accomplishments because he believed they would give him favour in the eyes of Miss Arbery. Henry was young and enthusiastic. His brother Arthur, who was two years his senior, regarded the infatuation of Henry as one of the heaviest misfortunes which could have befallen him.
“Take my word for it, Harry, she has no heart,” he would say to him at times.
But the other replied lightly that he couldn’t see how such an anatomical omission was possible, and fell more and more hopelessly in love every day. These people belonged to the same sphere, and opportunities for the interchange of sentiment were frequent. Upon Henry Chilcott the effect of such interchanges of sentiment with Kate Arbery varied. Sometimes he would return to his home elated, beaming, and hilarious. At other times he would come back down-hearted, misanthropic, and despairing. And his brother, interpreting the symptoms, knew that Kate had given him high reasons for hope, or that she had treated him with studied coldness and hauteur. Harry’s nature was a singularly simple and unsuspecting one. He attributed her varying moods to anything but the right cause. But after a year of assiduous attention and of much love-making of the kind when no word of love has been spoken, Harry Chilcott determined to know the worst.
There had been a meet at Anstey Barrows, and after a long and exciting chase the stag was killed at the Water’s-meet on the Lynn. But few of those who saw the stag break were in at the death. Among those few were Kate Arbery and her admirer. After they had witnessed the agreeable spectacle of disembowelling “the stag of ten,” an operation completed with great nicety and despatch by the huntsmen, they rode together slowly in the direction of home—for their horses were by no means so fresh as when they streamed away towards the water from Anstey Barrows. Then he spoke. And she, full of high spirits and the keen sense of enjoyment born of sport, at first bantered her gallant, and then snubbed him. She was simply borne away by a fine flow of animal spirits. He accepted her answers seriously and in silence. He had received his sentence, and he had no right to question the wisdom of the judge. Though she might, he thought, have been less cruelly severe in her manner of awarding it.
The grey shades of evening were closing in by the time they reached her father’s gates. As they were flung open, Kate saw that Harry held his horse in.
“You’ll come up to the house, will you not?” she said.
He answered sorrowfully,—
“No, I wish to say good-bye.”
“Oh! good-bye, then.”
“But I mean,” he said, “shake hands with me. For it is good-bye for ever.”