glided into his ear as he gave Miss Bellasys her candle on retiring, ten
for the Parthian glance that shot its arrow home.




CHAPTER IX.

"I know the purple vestment;
I know the crest of flame;
So ever _rides_ Mamilius,
Prince of the Latian name."


The next was a perfect hunting morning; a light breeze, steady from the
southwest, and not too much sun; the very day when a scent, in and out
of cover, would be a certainty, if there were any calculation on this
contingency. Let us do our sisters justice--there is _one_ thing in
nature more uncertain and capricious than the whims of womankind.

The hounds had come up with their usual train of officials, and of those
steady-going sportsmen who love the pack better than their own children,
and can call each individual in it by his name. Godfrey Parndon was
doing the civil to the "great men in Israel," his heaviest subscribers;
pinks were gleaming in every direction through the clumps and belts of
plantation, as the men came up at a hard gallop on their cover-hacks, or
opened the pipes of their hunters by a stretch over the turf of the
park.

On the hall steps stood Flora Bellasys--Penthesilea in a wide-awake and