"Men are always in fusses. Ulfar has kept my heart palpitating ever since he could walk alone." Sarah sighed. "It is very difficult," she said, "to decide whether very old men or very young men can be the greater trial. The suffering both can cause is immense! Poor Sandys was sixty-six, and Ulfar is thirty-six, and--" She shook her head, and sighed again. "How hateful country-people are!" exclaimed Elizabeth. "They must talk, no matter what tragedy they cause with their scandalous words." "Are they worse than our own set, either in town or country? You know what the Countess of Denbigh considered pleasant conversation?--telling things that ought not to be told." "The Countess is a wretch! she would tell the most sacred of secrets." "I tell secrets also. I do not consider it wrong. What business has any one to throw the _onus_ of keeping their secret on my shoulders? Why should they expect from me more prudence than they themselves have shown?" "That is true. But in these valleys they speak so uncomfortably direct; nothing but the strongest, straightest, most definite words will be used." "That is a pity. People ought to send scandal through society in a respectable hunt-the-slipper form of circulation. But that is a kind of decency to be cultivated. However, I shall tell Ulfar, in the plainest words I can find, that there will be about sixty Cumberland squires here to-morrow, to ride with him out of the county, and that they are looking forward to the fun of it just as much as if it was a fox-hunt. Ulfar has imagination. He will be able to conceive such a ride,--the flying man, and the roaring, laughing, whip-cracking squires after him! He will remember how Tom Appleton the wrestler, who did something foul, was escorted across the county line last summer. And Ulfar hates a scene. Can you fancy him making himself the centre of such an affair?" So they talked while Brune galloped homeward in a very happy mood. He felt as those ancients may have felt when they met the Immortals and saluted them. The thought of the beautiful Mrs. Sandys filled his imagination; but he talked comfortably to Aspatria, and assured her that there was now no fear of a meeting between her husband and Will. "Only," he said, "tell Will yourself to-night, and he will never doubt you." Unfortunately, Will did not return that night from the Frosthams'; for in the morning the two men were to go together to Dalton very early. Will heard nothing there, but Mrs. Frostham was waiting at her garden gate to tell him when he returned. He had left Squire Frostham with his son-in-law, and was alone. Mrs. Frostham made a great deal of the information, and broke it to Will with much consideration. Will heard her sullenly. He was getting a few words ready for Aspatria, as Mrs. Frostham told her tale, but they were for her alone. To Mrs. Frostham he adopted a tone she thought very ungrateful.