"No," said Miss Chipchase, "I don't think that is necessary. Jim and Mr. Sartoris will no doubt take every care of her. We had better jump into the road, Blanche, and see if they are coming that way." But of course there were no signs of the rearguard along the highway; and after a delay of a few minutes the party agreed that Sylla was well taken care of, and they might as well proceed leisurely homewards. The victim of her ambition to "witch the world with noble horsemanship" saw the leaders vanish from her view with much satisfaction. Under Jim Bloxam's guidance, and proceeding quietly over more moderate fences, which, though not the straightest, was perhaps the safest, path to the high-road, they regained it without further accident. It must not be supposed that Sylla's nerves were shaken by her fall. She rode as boldly as at first at everything her Mentor allowed; but she was in a strange country, and compelled, whether she liked it or not, to trust herself to Jim Bloxam's guidance. "Now," she exclaimed, "you have come very nearly to the end of your responsibilities, Captain Bloxam. You have only, if possible, to smuggle me into the rectory; and remember--I swear you both to secresy." "I can take you," replied Jim, "by a bridle-path through the wood, which will in all probability insure your reaching the rectory grounds unnoticed; but your getting into the house I must leave to your own ingenuity." When, in the course of the evening, Jim, in his own impetuous fashion, told that he had asked the Chipchase girls to come up to the Grange the next evening, with a view to charades and an impromptu valse or two, Lady Mary received the intelligence with the calm resignation of a follower of Mahomet. She saw it was hopeless attempting any further to control the march of events. "No," she murmured confidentially to Mr. Cottrell in the drawing-room, "the Fates are against me. I have done all that woman could, but I cannot contend with destiny. It is sad; but whatever with due forethought I propose, destiny, embodied in the shape of that wretch Jim, persistently thwarts. There is no such thing as instilling the slightest tact into him." "But, my dear Lady Mary," rejoined Cottrell, whose sense of the humorous was again highly gratified by the outcome of the trip to Trotbury, "I really cannot see that you have any cause for complaint. Things look to me progressing very favourably in the direction you wish." "My dear Pansey," replied her ladyship, solemnly, "you do not understand these things _quite so well_ as I thought you did. A variety of belles disturbs concentration, and prevents that earnestness of purpose which is so highly desirable." "I see," rejoined Pansey, laughing. "To revert to the metaphor you used in our conversation some days since, you object to a peal of belles. Your doctrine may be embodied in the formula, I presume, of one belle and one ringer."