The morning after the Horticultural Fête, Coverdale suggested to his wife that they had, in his opinion, spent sufficient time and money in the gay metropolis, and that agricultural and manorial duties called him to the country forthwith; but Alice pleaded so earnestly for only one week more of dissipation, with Lady Tattersall Trottemout’s _soirée dansante_ at the end of it, that Harry could not find it in his heart to refuse her. Scarcely had he yielded the point, when a letter arrived from Tom Rattleworth, Magistrate, and Master of Fox-hounds, to inform him that, owing to the baneful influence of a certain grand seigneur in the neighbourhood, it was proposed to enclose a common and turn a road, which would destroy a favourite fox cover, and give Coverdale half-a-mile further to drive to the nearest railway-station--that the matter was to be decided at the next meeting of Magistrates--that he (Thomas) had striven tooth and nail to get up an opposition, in which he had been tolerably successful, and that he considered it only required Coverdale’s presence to prevent the evil altogether. Thus urged, Harry had but one course to pursue, viz., commend his wife to Mrs. Crane’s safe custody, and start for Coverdale Park forthwith, promising to return in time for “Lady Tat. Trott.’s benefit,” as he was pleased to term it. Alice at first opposed his going, but when she found the question resolved itself into one of these alternatives, either that she must let him go alone, or give up her ball and accompany him, her opposition ceased. So Harry packed his carpet-bag and departed--and the hours rolled by on their patent noiseless wheels, until the time appointed for that notable solemnity, Lady Tattersall Trottemout’s _soirée dansante_, arrived. On that day Lord Alfred Courtland invited to a quiet dinner, at his comfortable bachelor lodgings, Horace D’Almayne, Monsieur Guillemard, and a youth who, because he was in every particular Lord Alfred’s exact opposite, was an especial crony of his.