listened to Barton's Indian story for the hundredth time, and it got rather slow; then I remembered that the chestnut had been eating his head off for the last five weeks, and thought I would give him a turn."

The earl frowned and turned away; Lord Charles laughed.

"Pretty behavior!" he exclaimed; "and here were we hunting all over the place for you."

"Why didn't you come into the drawing-room to us, Lord Leycester?" said a beautiful girl who was sitting near; "we should not have bored you with any Indian stories."

"But, you see, I should have bored you, Lady Constance," he said.

The girl smiled up into his face.

"Perhaps you would," she said. "You are more considerate than I thought."

"I never venture into the ladies' sanctum after dinner till the tea is announced," he retorted. "I have an idea, shared by my sex generally, that it is not safe—that, in short, you are too ferocious."

"And you prefer riding about the country till we quiet down. Are we quiet now, or do we look ferocious?"

And she smiled up at him from behind her fan with a plain invitation.

He sat down beside her and began to talk the infinite nothings which came to his lips so easily, the trivial small change which his musical voice and rare smile seemed to transform to true coin; but while he talked his thoughts were wandering to the[24] dark-haired girl who had shone down upon him from her green and fragrant bower in the lane, and he found himself picturing her in the little room at the cottage in the meadows, amongst the curious litter of the old artist's studio; and gradually his answers grew disjointed and inconsequential.

[24]

He got up presently, got up abruptly, and wandered across the room stopping to exchange a word or two with one and the other, his tall, graceful figure towering above those of the other men, his handsome head thrown back musingly. Many an admiring and wistful glance followed him from among the women, and not a few would have exerted all their fascinations to keep him by their side, had they not known by experience, that when he was in his present mood he was deaf to the voice and smile of the charmer, charmed she never so wisely.

 CHAPTER IV.

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