Betty ran forward, of course, to greet Sir Samuel; and her mother, loosing her hand from Caroline's arm, followed the child. "No need to ask you where you come from," she said, half gaily. She held out her hand to Broxbourne, but he shook his head, and showed his own mud-stained one by way of explanation. He was not agreeable to look at. There was a grim, ugly expression on his face--the look of a man who knew how impotent anger was, and yet who could not help being angry. Camilla was full of sympathy. "I hope you have not hurt yourself," she said; "but," remembering quickly, "how came you to be hunting? I thought you were an invalid?" Then with a fugitive smile, "Indeed, I supposed you were still abroad." "Came back three days ago," the man answered rather shortly. "I suppose Brenton will not mind putting this animal up for me? He can't go much further." "Where are you staying?" asked Camilla. They all moved on together slowly. He mentioned a house that had been taken for the hunting season by some friends of hers. At this juncture Caroline and the children walked briskly on ahead. "It is tea-time, you know," the girl explained. As a matter of fact, she was anxious to get away. Sir Samuel had a trick of staring at any woman he thought worth looking at in a very embarrassing fashion, and Caroline was certainly pleasing to the eye. The note of her appearance was simplicity itself beside the costly elegance of Mrs. Lancing, but she was slim, and straight, and fresh, and young, and with such a pair of eyes any woman must have been attractive. "So you are rusticating," Broxbourne said, as he and Camilla were left to themselves; "not much in your line, is it? But I suppose now that you are going to settle down you have turned over a new leaf entirely. Is the lucky man down here?" "No, he has gone to build a hospital, or buy up a whole county, as a thanksgiving for our approaching wedding," Camilla laughed. "Don't you think a hospital is a very good idea? I expect he imagines he may want it before I have finished with him." She spoke as lightly as ever, and laughed with the same ease, but within the warm embrace of her furs she seemed to wither, to shrink a little. Not half an hour before she had been longing, praying almost, for some barrier to stand in the pathway of her marriage. Now she knew with the unerring sense of intuition that what she had dreaded so much just before Christmas, and which of late she had managed to forget almost entirely, was coming upon her--that her future was definitely threatened. She had been so protected of late, so wrapped about with the tenderest, the most chivalrous care, that she felt this sudden translation into the old atmosphere more keenly than she had ever felt any of her former troubles and anxieties. It was as though she had been stripped of every warm garment, and thrust shivering and helpless into the aching cold of a black frost. Yet she tried to play her part.