the privilege of meeting this evening. What are strata to us, when our thoughts will not go lower than about _eight feet_ underground? We shall be rather bored than otherwise by Dr. Sternhold, that eminent Christian divine, who passes his leisure hours in proving St. Paul to have been an unsound theologian and a weak dialectician. Why should Mr. Planet, the intrepid traveler, be always inflicting Jerusalem upon us, as if no one had ever visited the Holy Land before him? Our ancestors did so five hundred years ago, and did not make half the fuss about it; and _they_ had a skirmish or two there worth speaking of, while we don't believe a word of Planet's encounter with those three Arabs on the Hebron road. Pooh! there's no more peril in traversing the Wilderness of Cades than in going up to the Grands Mulets. We are not worthy of those distinguished men, and would prefer the society of hard-riding Dick Foley of the Blues. He had a few feelings in common with us once on a certain point (how we hated him then), and he won't wonder if we are duller than usual this evening. Perhaps his own nerve will scarcely be as iron as usual in the Grand Military, to come off in the course of the week. Well, the bottle is out, and Mademoiselle Zelpa comes to say that "Madame is ze raidee." So one glass of Cognac neat, as a _chasse_ (to more things than good Claret), and then--let us put on our whitest tie and our most attractive smile, and "go forth, for she is gone." CHAPTER VIII. "A man had given all other bliss And all his worldly worth for this, To waste his whole heart in one kiss Upon her perfect lips." We were asked to dine and sleep at Brainswick, where the hounds met on the following morning. Mr. Raymond could not make up his mind to the exertion, so Forrester and I accompanied Guy alone. "By-the-by," the latter observed, as we were driving over in his mail-phaeton, "I wonder if we shall see the Bellasys to-night? I know they were to come down about this time. Steady, old wench! where are you off to?" (This was to the near wheeler, who was breaking her trot.) "I think you'll admire her, Frank; but, _gare a vous_, she's dangerous. Eh, Charley?" "Well, you ought to know," answered Forrester; "I never tried her much myself. She's two or three stone over my weight. I wonder what she has been doing lately? They sent her down to rusticate somewhere at the end of the season. She ought to be in great condition now, with a summer's run." Livingstone smiled, complacently I thought, as if some one had praised one of his favorite hunters, but did not pursue the subject. When I came down before dinner he was talking to a lady in dark blue silk, with black lace over it, a wreath curiously plaited of natural ivy in her hair. I guessed her at once to be Flora Bellasys. Let me try to paint--though abler artists have failed--the handsomest brunette I have ever seen.