abhorrence, and set out at a trot. Song in defeat was a hiss of derision
to him.

He had failed. Having failed, he for the first time perceived the
wildness of a plot that had previously appeared to him as one of the
Yorkshire Morsfields' moves to win an object. Traditionally they stopped
at nothing. There would have been a sunburst of notoriety in the capture
and carrying off of the beautiful Countess of Ormont.

She had eluded him during the downward journey to Steignton. He came on
her track at the village at the junction of the roads above Ashead, and
thence, confiding in the half-connivance or utter stupidity of the fair
one's duenna, despatched a mounted man-servant to his coachman and
footmen, stationed ten miles behind, with orders that they should drive
forthwith to the great plain, and be ready at a point there for two
succeeding days. That was the plot, promptly devised upon receipt of
Mrs. Pagnell's communication; for the wealthy man of pleasure was a
strategist fit to be a soldier, in dexterity not far from rivalling the
man by whom he had been outdone.

An ascetic on the road to success, he dedicated himself to a term of hard
drinking under a reverse; and the question addressed to the chief towns
in the sketch counties his head contained was, which one near would be
likely to supply the port wine for floating him through garlanding dreams
of possession most tastily to blest oblivion.

He was a lover, nevertheless, honest in his fashion, and meant not worse
than to pull his lady through a mire, and wash her with Morsfield soap,
and crown her, and worship. She was in his blood, about him, above him;
he had plunged into her image, as into deeps that broke away in