Over the moist ground, and under the bare branches that dripped slow tears of past rain, the brilliant hunting train swept onward, Maryllia riding in the midst, till they came out on a bare stretch of moorland covered with sparse patches of gorse and fir. Here they all paused, listening to the cry of the huntsman in the bottoms, and watching the hounds as they drew up wind.

The eyes of every man present wandered now and again to Maryllia in admiration,--none of them had ever seen her look so lovely, so bright, so entirely bewitching. She was always at her best in the saddle. When she had paid her first visit to America with her uncle and aunt as a girl of sixteen, she had been sent for the benefit of her health to stay with some people who owned a huge Californian 'ranch,' and there she learned to ride on horses that were scarcely broken in, and to gallop across miles and miles of prairie, bareheaded to the burning sun, and had, in such pastime, felt the glorious sense of that savage and splendid freedom which is the true heritage of every child of nature,--a heritage too often lost in the tangled ways of over-civilisation, and seldom or never regained. The dauntless spirit of joyous liberty was in her blood,--she loved the fresh air and vigorous exercise, and was a graceful, daring rider, never knowing what it was to feel a single pulse of fear. Just now she was radiantly happy.