"'T isn't often we gives you a run like that, ma'm," said the huntsman; and his saturnine face might have been a boy's, as he produced a piece of whipcord from his breeches pocket and began fastening the brush to Aliette's saddle-ring.

Various belated riders, the wily parson, the panting colonel, and the chagrined politician among them, came up and began congratulating. Sandwich-boxes were produced, flasks, cigarettes. Sir Siegfried looked at his watch; and started in to consider what degree of exaggeration might be warranted in subsequent reports of their day. It was nearly half-past two o'clock--call it three. They had begun to draw Parson's Wood at about one--make it half-past twelve. It is to be feared that the hour's run, by the time it was reported to Sir Siegfried's connubial fireside, had suffered considerable extension.

But neither Aliette nor Ronnie, as they walked their horses side by side into Key Hatch village (Gorse Hill is twelve miles from kennels, and the colonel, well satisfied with his kill, had ordered the pack home), spoke of the run.

Indeed, they hardly spoke at all. And when she said good-by to him at the open posting-doorways of the Bull, neither remembered to ask the other where or whether they should meet again. Which forgetfulness, thought Aliette as she turned Miracle's head for home, was the strangest part of a strangely joyous day.

But Ronald Cavendish, watching her mounted figure disappear down the village street, thought only of their ride together.

"You can't possibly want to brush it any more, Caroline." Aliette's maid, a square-hipped, square-shouldered, square-faced woman who had been in service with the Fullerford family ever since Judge Fullerford came back from Trinidad, laid the ivory-backed hair-brushes on the dressing-table, and began to twine the vivid coils round the small head.

There is neither gas nor electric light at Moor Park. In the slanted oval of the old-fashioned mirror, Aliette could only see, either side of her rather serious face, two primrose points of candle-flame. The long low bedroom behind her--furnished in mid-Victorian mahogany, Morris-papered with tiny roses on an exiguous trellis--was almost in darkness, darkness against which the primrose candle-glow showed Aliette's full beauty.You saw her now--bathed after hunting, peacock-blue kimono round her dimpled shoulders--as a creature of supreme health. Her arms were smooth, lustrous; her wrists rounded; her hands small, a little broad in the palm--resolute strong hands for all their smallness. Her 

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