Freeman touched his hat gratefully, but not submissively, as he pocketed the half-sovereign which Mr. Simnel slipped into his capacious palm, and moved off towards the stables with the groom and the horses. "Good man, that," said Simnel to himself, as he went into the house. "Straightforward, conscientious sort of fellow, and thoroughly devoted to _her_. Proper style of man to have in an establishment: thoroughly respectable--do one credit by his looks. If it ever comes off, I certainly should keep Mr. Freeman on." Mr. Simnel passed on into the long low dining-room, where he found the table spread for luncheon, with a very substantial display of cold roast beef, fowls, and tongue, sherry, and a tall bottle of German wine. He smiled as he noticed these preparations, and then leisurely walked round the room. He paused at an oil-painting of Kate with a favourite horse by her side. The artist evidently knew much more about the equine than the human race. The horse's portrait was admirable, but poor Kitty, with vermilion cheeks and glaring red hair, and a blue habit with long daubs of light in it, like rain-streaks on a window, was a lamentable object to look on. Only one other picture decorated the walls, a portrait of the Right Hon. the Earl of Quorn, aged 61, founder of the Society for the Relief of Incapacitated Jobmasters and Horse-dealers, dedicated to him by his faithful servants the publishers; representing a hale old gentleman, remarkable principally for his extraordinary length of check-neckcloth, seated on a weight-carrying cob, and staring intently at nothing. On a side-table lay a thick book, _Youatt on the Horse_, and a thin pamphlet, _Navicular not Incurable_, a _Little Warbler_ (poor Kitty!), and a kind of album, into which a heterogeneous mixture of recipes for horse-medicines, scraps of hunting news, lists of prices fetched at the sales of celebrated studs, and other sporting memoranda had been pasted. Simnel was looking through this, and had just come upon a slip of printed matter, evidently cut from a newspaper, announcing the appointment of Mr. Charles Beresford to be a commissioner of the Tin-Tax Office, in place of Cockle pensioned--a slip against which there were three huge deep pencil-scorings--when the door opened and his hostess entered. Although her habit was draggled and splashed, and her hair disarranged and blown about her face, Kate Mellon never had looked, to Simnel's eyes at least, more thoroughly charming than she did at that instant. The exercise she had just gone through had given her a splendid colour, her eyes were bright and sparkling, her whole frame showed to perfection in the tight-fitting jacket; and as she came into the room and removed her hat, the knot of hair behind, loosened from the comb, fell over her shoulders in golden profusion. She wound it up at once with one hand, advancing with the other outstretched to her guest.