accused of being both. You want to fancy us all angels, and you can
not reconcile an angelic being with a side-saddle and a hard gallop.
Now, I don't own to being anything in the Di Vernon line myself, and I
don't wish to be; but I do think a pretty girl never looks half so
pretty as when well mounted. You should have seen Harrie Hunsden, as I
saw her the other day, and you would surely recant your heresy about
ladies and horse-flesh."

"Is Harrie Hunsden a lady?"

"Certainly. Don't you know her? She is Captain Hunsden's only
daughter--Hunsden, of Hunsden Hall, one of your oldest Devon families.
You'll find them duly chronicled in Burke and Debrett. Miss Hunsden is
scarcely eighteen, but she has been over the world--from Quebec to
Gibraltar--from Halifax to Calcutta. Two years of her life she passed
at a New York boarding-school, of which city her mother was a native."

"Indeed!" Sir Everard said, just lifting his eyebrows. "And Miss
Hunsden rides well?"

"Like Di Vernon's self."

"Is your Miss Hunsden pretty? and shall we see her at the meet
to-morrow?"

"Yes to both questions; and more than at the meet, I fancy. She and
her thorough-bred, Whirlwind, will lead you all. Her scarlet habit and
'red roan steed' are as well known in the country as the duke's hounds,
and her bright eyes and dashing style have taken by storm the hearts of
half the fox-hunting squires of Devonshire."