by the dim moonlight in the Alhambra; and to Venice, to fling bouquets upwards to the balconies, and whisper to Venetian masks that showed him the glance of long almond eyes, in the riotous Carnival time. He had had a brief campaign in Scinde, where he was wounded in the hip, and tenderly nursed by a charming civil service widow; where his daring drew down upon him the admiring rebuke of his commanding officer, and won him his troop, which promotion had brought him back to England and enabled him to exchange into the Lancers, techni

cally the Dashers, the best nom de guerre for that daring and brilliant corps. And now De Vigne, who had never lost sight of me since the Frestonhill's days, but, on the contrary, often asked me to go and shoot over Vigne when he assembled a whole crowd of guests in that magnificent mansion, had now, having a couple of months' leave, run down to Newmarket for the October Meeting, and had come at my entreaty to spend a week in Granta, where, I need not tell you, we fêted him, and did him the honours of the place in no bad style.

Crash! crash! went the relentless chapel bell the next morning, waking us out of dreamless slumber that had endured not much more than an hour, owing to a late night of it with a man at John's over punch and vingt-et-un; and we had to tumble out of bed and rush into chapel, twisting on our coats and swearing at our destinies as we went. The Viewaway, the cleverest pack in the easterly counties, though not, I admit, up to the Burton, or Tedworth, or Melton mark, met that day for the first run of the season at Euston Hollows, five miles from Cambridge, and Curly, who overcame his love of the dolce on such occasions, staggered into his stall, the pink dexterously covered with his surplice, his bright hair for once in disorder, and his blue eyes most unmistakably sleepy. "Who'd be a hapless undergrad? That fellow De Vigne's dreaming away in comfort, while we're dragged out by the heels for a lot of confounded humbug and form," lamented Curly to me, as we entered. The readers hurried the prayers over in that sing-song recitative in favour with college-men, which is a cross between the drone of a gnat and the whine of a Suffolk peasant; it's meant to be, I presume, as indeed I think it's called, "intoning." We young fellows dozed comfortably, sitting down and getting up at the right times by sheer force of habit, or read Dumas or Balzac under cover of our prayer-books. The freshmen alone tried to look alive and attentive; we knew it was but a ritual, much such an empty but time-honoured one as the gathering of Fellows at the Signing of the Leases at King's, or any other moss-grown formula of Mater, and attempted no such thing, and rushed out of chapel again, the worse instead of the better for the ill-timed devotions, which forced us, in our thoughtless youth, into irreverence and hypocrisy, a formula as absurd, as soulless, and as sad to see as the praying windmills of the Hindoos, at which those "heads of the Church," who uphold morning chapel as the sole safeguard of Granta, smile in pitying derision.

When I got back to my rooms I found breakfast waiting, and De Vigne standing on the hearth-rug tickling my Skye with his ridingwhip, looking as gallant and as "game" in his scarlet hunting suit as any knight of old could do in hauberks and in mail, even if those gentry had been what Froissart and Commines, when we read them for the first time, would fain make us think and hope. Audit and hare-pie had not Jan.-VOL. CXXI. NO. CCCCLXXXI.

D

much temptation for us that morning. We were soon in saddle, and off to Euston Hollows; and after a brisk gallop to cover, we found ourselves riding up the approach to the M. F. H.'s house, where the meet was to be held. The house-a rather incongruous pile of Elizabethan architecture with Crystal Palace-like conservatories, which made it at once the idol and horror of the Archæological Society-stood well on a rising ground (the only rising ground, you will say, in that flat county), and the master of it, who had lately married as pretty a girl as any man could want to see, was slightly known to De Vigne, and well known to us, a frank, high-spirited, highly cultivated man-en un mot, an English gentleman, in the perfection of those meaning words. The meet took place in an open sweep of grassland belted with trees, just facing the hall, and there were gathered all the men of the Viewaway, mounted on powerful hunters, and looking all over like goers. There was every type of the genus sporting man, stout, square farmers, with honest bull-dog physique, characteristic of John Bull plebeian; wild young Cantabs, mounted showily from livery-stables, with the fair, fearless, delicate features characteristic of John Bull patrician; steady old whippers-in, very suspicious of brandy; wrinkled feeders, with stentorian voices that the wildest puppy had learned to know and dread; the courteous, cordial, aristocratic M. F. H., with the men of his class, the county gentry; rough, ill-looking cads, awkward at all things save crossing country; no end of pedestrians, nearly run over themselves, and falling into everybody's way; and last, but you are very sure, in our eyes, not least, the ladies who had come to see the hounds throw off at Euston Hollows.

De Vigne exchanged his reeking hack for his own hunter, a splendid grey thorough-bred, with as much light action, he said, as a danseuse, and as much strength and power as a bargeman. Then he and we rode up to talk to Mrs. L'Estrange, the M. F. H.'s wife, whom everybody called Flora, who was mounted on a beautiful little mare, and intended to follow her husband and his hounds over the Cambridge fences.

"Who is that lady yonder ?" asked De Vigne, after he had chatted some moments with her.

"The one on the horse with a white star on his forehead? Lady Blanche Fairelesyeux. Don't you know her? She is a widow, and a very pretty and rich one, too."

"Yes, yes, I know Lady Blanche," laughed De Vigne. "She married old Faire two years ago, and persuaded him to drink himself to death most opportunely. No, I meant that very handsome woman there, talking to your husband at this moment, mounted on a chesnut with a very wild eye."

"Oh, that is Miss Trefusis!"

"And can you tell me no more than her mere name ?"

"Not much. She is some relation-what I do not know exactly-of that detestable old woman Lady Fantyre, whose recollections' of court people are sometimes as gross anachronisms as the Comte de St. Germain's. They are staying with Mrs. St. Croix, and she brought them here; but I do not like Miss Trefusis very much myself, and Cecil-Mr. L'Estrange-does not wish me to cultivate her."

"Then I must not ask you to introduce me ?" said De Vigne, disappointedly.

"Oh yes, if you wish. I know her well enough for that; and she dines here to-night with the St. Croix. But there is a wide difference, you know, between making passing acquaintances and ripening them into friends. Come, Captain de Vigne, I am sure you will ride the hounds off the scent, or do something dreadful, if I do not let you talk to your new beauty," laughed the young mistress of Euston Hollows, turning her mare's head towards the showy chesnut, whose rider had won so much of De Vigne's admiration.

She was as dashing and magnificent in her way as her horse in his: a tall and voluptuously-perfect figure, which her tight dark riding-jacket showed in all the beauty of its rounded outlines, falling shoulders, and small waist, while her little hat, with a single white ostrich feather falling down and mingling with the dark massive braids of her hair, scarcely shadowed and did not conceal her face, with its singularly handsome features, clear aquiline profile, magnificent eyes, and lips by which Velasquez or Vandyke would have sworn, though they were too haughty, and too indicative of an imperious and unyielding nature to please me. Splendid she was, and she had spared no pains to make the tableau; and though, to a keen eye, her brilliant colour, which was not rouge, and her pencilled eyebrows, which were tinted, gave her a trifle of the actress or the lorette style, there was no wonder that De Vigne, impressible as a Southern by women's beauty-and at that time as long as it was beauty, not caring much of what stamp or of what order-was not easy till Flora L'Estrange had introduced him to Constance Trefusis. So we rush upon our doom! So we, in thoughtless play, twist the first gleaming and silky threads of the fatal cord that will cling about our necks, fastened beyond hope of release, as long as our lives shall last! Constance Trefusis, surrounded as she was by the best men of the Viewaway, ruling them by force of that superb form and face-not by wit or conversation, for she had not overmuch of that, save a shrewd sarcastic rejoinder now and then-bowed very graciously to De Vigne, and smiled upon him with her rose-hued lips. He had caught her eyes upon him once or twice before he had asked Mrs. L'Estrange who she was; and now, displacing the others with that calm, unconscious air of superiority, the more irritating to his rivals that it was invariably successful, he leaned his hand on the pommel of her saddle, and talked away to her on the chit-chat of the hour, which, however common-place the subject, he knew how to treat, so as to give it a piquance and an interest quite foreign to itself.

The Trefusis, as all the men called her, intended to follow the hounds, as well as L'Estrange's wife and Lady Blanche Fairelesyeux (the little widow being well known in most hunting countries, and having more than once seen the finish in Leicestershire and Northamptonshire runs); so De Vigne and his new acquaintance rode off together as the hounds, symmetrical in form, and all in good condition, though they were a provincial establishment, trotted away, with waving sterns and eager eyes, to draw the Euston Hollows covert. "Will Trefusis or Reynard win the day?" I wondered, as I saw De Vigne pay much more attention to the white teeth and oriental eyes of his handsome Amazon than to the fidgety gambols of his grey Berwick.

There was not long much doubt about it. The cheery "Halloo!" rang over coppice and brushwood and plantation, the white sterns of the dogs flourished among the dark-brown bushes of the cover, the mellow horn rang out in joyous triumph, stentorian lungs shouted out the delicious "Stole away!-hark for-r-r-r-rard!" and as the finest fox in the county broke away, De Vigne stuck his spurs into his hunter's flanks, and rattled down the cover, all his thoughts centred on the clever little pack that streamed along before him; and the whole field burst away over the low parterres and oak fences and ox-rails, across which the fox was leading us. I dashed along the three first meadows, only divided by low hedges that a Shetland could have taken with all the excitement and breathlessness of a first start; but as we crossed the fourth at an easy gallop, cooling the horses before the formidable leap which we knew the Cam, or rather a narrow sedgy tributary of it, would give us at the bottom of it, I took breath, and looked around. Before any of us, De Vigne was going along as straight as an arrow's flight, working Berwick up for the approaching trial, never looking back, gone into the sport before him as if he never had had, and never could have had, any other interest in life. The Trefusis, riding as few women could, sitting well down in her saddle, like any of the Pytchley or Belvoir men, was some yards behind him, “riding jealous," I could see; rather a hopeless task for a young lady with a man known in the hunting-field as Granville was. The M. F. H. was, of course, handling his hunter like the masterly whip he was, his little wife keeping gallantly up with him, though she and her mare, so slight and so graceful were they, looked as likely to be smashed by the first staken-bound fence as a Sèvres figure or a Parian statuette. Curly, who, thanks to his half-broken hunter, had split four strong oak bars, and been once pitched neck and crop into Cambridge mud, was coming along with his pink sadly stained, but his pluck game as ever. Lady Blanche and four of the men were within a few paces of him, while the rest of the field were scattered far and wide: quaint bits of scarlet, green, and black, dotting the short brown turf of the pasture land.

Splash went the fox into the sedgy water of this branch of classic Cam, and scrambled up upon the opposite bank. For a second the hounds lost the scent; then they threw up their heads with a joyous challenge, breasted the stream, dashed on after him, and sped along beyond the pollards on the opposite side far ahead of us, streaming along like the white tail of a comet. De Vigne put his grey at the yawning ditch, but before he could lift him over it the Trefusis, striking her chesnut savagely, cleared it with unblanched cheek and unshaken nerve. She looked back with a laugh, not of gay girlish merriment, such as Flora L'Estrange would have done, but a laugh with a certain scorn and gratified malice in it, and he gave a muttered oath at being cut down by a woman as he landed his grey beside her, and dashed onwards.

I cleared it, so did the M. F. H., and, by some species of sporting miracle, so did his wife and her little mare. Sworn to the chase as the gallant master of the Viewaways was, he could not help now and then turning his head with a word of admonition or advice to his plucky little Flora; a weakness for which I, being about half his age, and, consequently, much more up to life and steeled to women, regarded him with consum

mate contempt. One of the yeomen found a watery bed among the tadpoles, clay, and rushes-it might be a watery grave, for anything I know to the contrary-and poor dear Curly was tumbled straight off his young one, and he and his horse lay there, a helpless mass of human and equine flesh, while Lady Blanche lifted her roan over him, with a gay, unsympathising "Keep still, or Mazeppa will damage you!"

The run had lasted but ten minutes and a half as yet, and the hounds, giving tongue in joyous concert, led the way for those who could follow them, over blackthorn hedges, staken-bound fences, and heavy ploughed lands, while the fox was heading for Sifton Wood, where, once lodged, we should never unearth him again. We could not see him, but the dogs never once lost scent, and on we went at a killing pace. De Vigne, happy fellow! riding on before any of us, even before the Trefusis, by two lengths.

Half a mile before Sifton Wood there was a cramped and awkward leap; a high, stiff, straggling hedge, with a ditch-confound the Cambridge ditches!-Heaven knows how wide, immediately before it, almost as bad as a Leicestershire bullfinch, a leap to tax a man's skill and his horse's powers, and which a woman might pardonably fear, with all the courage in the world. Absorbed as I was in working up my hunter for the leap, I looked to see if the Trefusis funked it. Not she; and she cleared it, too, lifting her chesnut high in the air, over the ugly blackthorn boughs; but on the other side the chesnut fell forwards, and stumbled on his head, so they told me afterwards. The courtly M. F. H. stopped to offer her assistance, but she waved him on. De Vigne (will he lose your liking, mademoiselle?) had forgotten his chivalry in the chase, and dashed straight on without looking back; while, picking up her hunter, the Trefusis remounted and rode forward with damaged habit but undaunted spirit. Lady Blanche's Mazeppa refused the leap; and with a little petulant French oath she rode farther down, to try and find a gap; and my luckless underbred one flung me over his head, rolling on his back, and looking piteous to the last extremity in his improvised couch of rushes, nettles, mud, and duckweed, and before either he or I could pick ourselves up and shake off the humiliating slough, the fox was killed, and the glorious whoop of triumph came ringing far over plantations and pastures, on the clear October air.

With not a few anathemas on the cruel fate that had shut me out from the honours of the finish, I rode through the gap lower down that Lady Blanche had found, and made my way to those luckier mortals who had had the glory of being in at the death. The brush had been awarded to De Vigne by the old huntsman, who might have given it to the Trefusis, for she was but a yard or two behind him; but Squib had no tenderness for the sex; indeed, he looked on them as having no earthly business in the field, and gave it with a gruff word of compliment to Granville, who of course handed it to Miss Trefusis, but claimed the right of sending it up to town to be mounted in ivory and gold for her. That dashing Amazon herself sat on her trembling and foam-covered chesnut with the dignity and royal beauty of Cynisca, returning from the Olympian games; and De Vigne seemed to think nothing more attractive than this haughty, triumphant, imperial Constance, who had skill and pluck worthy a Pytchley Nestor. I preferred little Flora's girlish pity for the "poor dear