Kate involuntarily returned his smile; tact and keen intelligence were qualities she highly appreciated. “You are a close observer,” she said, “and shall be rewarded by learning the interesting fact that I _do_ prefer bay horses to those of any other colour.” Before the week was over, Mr. Crane had purchased a magnificent pair of bay carriage-horses, and had taken a lease of a noble mansion in Park Lane. The only fault Kate could discover in either, was the conviction forced upon her that it was to the agency of Horace D’Almayne she was indebted for them. CHAPTER XXIII.--ADVICE GRATIS. Harry could not give up shooting, Harry would not give up shooting, and Harry did not give up shooting. On the contrary, he could, would, and did shoot _every_ day, and all day long, except on Sundays, throughout September and October; at least, there were so few exceptions that they only proved the rule. Alice did not like it at all; at first she was very miserable. One day Harry found her crying, and being considerably surprised and greatly concerned at the unaccountable discovery, did not rest until he had ascertained the cause, when he was particularly shocked, and blamed himself so much, that he refrained from shooting for two whole days, and really would have striven to reform his conduct, only that, unfortunately, an invitation arrived to join a grand _battue_ at a certain Colonel Crossman’s. This, in his then frame of mind, he would have refused; but there being a Mrs. Crossman in the case, Alice was included in the invitation, and they were begged to stay three or four days; which, as the Popem Park preserves were the best stocked of any in the county, was an offer not lightly to be rejected. Thus, unfortunately, they went--we say unfortunately, because Colonel Crossman was, taken as a whole, a jovial, hot-tempered, selfish brute; and his wife a quick-witted, worldly-minded, selfish fool. They did very well together, because, as he usually lived out of the house, and she in it, and both did exactly as they liked, when they liked, their faults seldom clashed; if such a collision did take place, there was an awful tumult, in which brutality had his way for the minute, and paid for it in minor miseries which folly indicted upon him for the next fortnight. And yet this amiable couple had a kind of theoretical and useless affection for each other, which was engendered partly by habit, and partly by a deep and essentially vulgar reverence for appearances, which, together with going to church once on Sunday, stood them in the stead of religion and of morality. Thus were they bad counsellors for our young married couple. On the first morning of her visit, Alice was standing at the drawing-room window, watching the figures of her husband and Colonel Crossman striding through a turnip field about a quarter of a mile distant, when Mrs. Crossman joined her.