All at once there was a stir round the gate-way: "The Duke at last!" looking for all the world, so Miss Vipen observed to Mrs. Sampson, like an old fat farmer, and apparently quite pleased at having kept everybody waiting. As for Lord Pendragon, he was evidently very much the fine gentleman--or, stay, the weedy scholar from Oxford who despised the humble sports of a dull neighbourhood. But the time would come--Miss Vipen nodded her head triumphantly--when he, Lord Pendragon, would become very fat, like his mother, who, it was well known, was now too stout to ride. "They say," whispered Miss Vipen in Mrs. Sampson's unwilling ear, "that he is in love with a clergyman's daughter, and that the Duke won't hear of it! If they made her father a Bishop, I suppose it would be less objectionable-- Ah! there's the Duchess. They say her carriages are always built just about a foot broader than anybody else's in order that her size may not show so much." A move was now made for Whitecombe wood, and the Master trotted down towards a point from which on many a former occasion he had viewed a fox break away in the direction of the open down, and had been able to get a good start before he could be overtaken by what he used to call "all these confounded holiday jostlers." While all this was going on, Captain Laxton had not stirred from Lucy's side, and together they rode over up towards Boadicea's camp. "If they find soon, which I think very doubtful," he said quietly, "and if, what is even less likely, the fox breaks, he is sure to head this way"--he pointed to the left--"because of the wind." Lucy looked at him with a certain respect: she herself would never have thought of that! Captain Laxton, in the past, had often surprised her by his odd little bits of knowledge. She suddenly felt glad that he was there, and that apparently he bore her no grudge. More, she reminded herself that during the whole of the past summer she had missed his good-natured presence--that they had all missed him, her mother even more than herself. If he had not come to Whiteways to-day, she would now be by herself, down among those foolish people who were riding quickly and aimlessly up and down the steep roads near the wood, her father throwing her a word now and then no doubt, but Oliver giving her neither look, word, nor thought. Lucy had become aware that Boringdon and Mrs. Rebell had chosen, as she and Laxton had done, a point of vantage away from the rest of the field, and that Oliver, with eager glowing face, was explaining the whole theory of hunting to his companion--further, that she was hanging on his words with great interest. Meanwhile, Captain Laxton was looking at Lucy Kemp no less ardently than Boringdon was gazing at Barbara Rebell. The young man had come out to-day with the definite intention of saying something to the girl, and now he wished to get this something said and over as quickly as possible.