they were to come down about this time. Steady, old wench! where are you
off to?" (This was to the near wheeler, who was breaking her trot.) "I
think you'll admire her, Frank; but, _gare à vous_, she's dangerous. Eh,
Charley?"

"Well, you ought to know," answered Forrester; "I never tried her much
myself. She's two or three stone over my weight. I wonder what she has
been doing lately? They sent her down to rusticate somewhere at the end
of the season. She ought to be in great condition now, with a summer's
run."

Livingstone smiled, complacently I thought, as if some one had praised
one of his favorite hunters, but did not pursue the subject.

When I came down before dinner he was talking to a lady in dark blue
silk, with black lace over it, a wreath curiously plaited of natural ivy
in her hair. I guessed her at once to be Flora Bellasys.

Let me try to paint--though abler artists have failed--the handsomest
brunette I have ever seen.

She was very tall; her figure magnificently developed, though
slender-waisted and lithe as a serpent. She walked as if she had been
bred in a _basquiña_, and her foot and ankle were hardly to be matched
on this side of the Pyrenees; the nose slightly aquiline, with thin,
transparent nostrils; and the forehead rather low--it looked more so,
perhaps, from the thick masses of dark hair which framed and shaded her
face. Under the clear, pale olive of the cheeks the rich blood mantled
now and then like wine in a Venice glass; and her lips--the outline of
the upper one just defined by a penciling of down, the lower one full