"She is a really nice girl," decided Barbara to herself; and Oliver also looked at his old friend Lucy very cordially. To his mind both young women looked exactly right, that is, exactly as he liked each of them to look--Lucy Kemp perhaps standing for the good serviceable homespuns of life, Barbara Rebell for those more exquisite, more thrilling moments with which he had, as yet unconsciously, come to associate her. "Of course," he said, a little quickly, "this is Mrs. Rebell's first experience of hunting, though she has ridden a great deal,--in fact, all her life. Otherwise Madame Sampiero would hardly have suggested sending over to Chillingworth for Saucebox. Hullo, Laxton!"--his voice became perceptibly colder, but Lucy noticed with some surprise that Mrs. Rebell bowed and smiled at the newcomer, but Boringdon gave her no time to speak to him--"You had better come over here," he said urgently, "we shall be getting to work soon," and in a moment, or so it seemed to Lucy, he and the lady whom she knew now to be Mrs. Rebell had become merged in the crowd, leaving Captain Laxton by her side looking down on her with the half bold, half fearful look she knew so well. * * * * * Boringdon had taken Barbara to the further side of the great stone gateway, and she was enjoying every moment of the time which seemed to many of those about her so tedious. She was even amused at listening to the quaint talk going on round her. "Scent going to be good to-day?" "Well, they _say_ there's always a scent some time of the day, and if you can find the fox _then_, why you're all right!"--and the boastful tone of a keen weather-beaten elderly man, "I never want a warranty,--why should a man expect to find a perfect horse?--he don't look for perfection when he's seeking a wife, eh?" "Oh! but there's two wanted to complete that deal. The old lady 'as not come up to the scratch yet, 'as she, John?" "Well, when she does, I shan't ask for any warranty, and I bet you I'll not come out any worse than other folk do!"--and then the old joke, one of Solomon's wise sayings, uttered by an old gentleman to a nervous girl, "Their strength shall be in sitting still!" Mrs. Rebell looked straight before her. Of all the cheerful folk gathered together near her, none seemed to have eyes for the beauty, the amazing beauty of the surrounding country. To the right of the kind of platform upon which the field was now gathered together, the hill dropped abruptly into a dark wood, a corner of the ancient forest of Anderida, that crossed by Cæsar when he came from Gaul--a forest stretching from end to end of the South Downs, broken by swift rivers running down to the sea. It was here--but Barbara, gazing with delighted eyes down over the treetops, did not know this--it was here, in this patch of primeval woodland, that the first fox of the season was always sought for and often found.