Christian looked at him, and sighed again. He was on her right, and she took her hunting-crop in her left hand, with the reins, and stretched out her right hand to him. He caught it, and kissed her slender wrist above the glove. There came back to Christian, with a rush, the remembrance of the May morning at the kennels when he had kissed her wrist. That had been the left wrist. The kiss had meant more to her than it had to him. Now, as she met his eyes she knew that she and he stood on level ground. Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel? Those even, who pin it down, and set it up in a glass case in the cause of science and for the edification of an inquisitive public, are not wholly to be commended, praiseworthy though their intentions may be. Let a rule of silence, therefore be observed, as far as may be. What this boy and girl said to each other, is their secret, not ours. The gorse in the high paddock held a fox; several, in fact, a lady having reared a fine young family there without any anxieties as to their support, thanks to the votive offerings of crows and rabbits, obsequiously laid on her doorstep, by her best friend, and her most implacable enemy, Mr. William Kirby, M.F.H. In recognition, no doubt, of these attentions, the lady in question permitted one of her sons to afford a little harmless pleasure to her benefactor, and this, having included a lively gallop of some three miles, ceased in a plantation where was the place of safety that had been indicated to the beginner, and ceased appositely, at an hour that made a late breakfast at Castle Ire a matter obvious, even imperative, for those who were not prepared to await, in patient starvation, that very inferior repast, an early lunch. Young Mrs. Kirby had not lost, with matrimony, the habit of having her own way. "No, Christian, you're not going home. You haven't seen Baby, and he really looks _rather_ sweet in his new--" (a negligible matter, whatever the attire the formulae being unvaried)--"and, besides," continued young Mrs. Kirby, with decision, "I want to talk to you." Being talked to by Judith was an adequate modern equivalent for an interview with the "Jailer's Daughter," as a method of obtaining information. Christian trembled for the secret of the pearl. "Bill tells me," began Judith, after the late breakfast had been disposed of, settling herself luxuriously in an armchair in the round tower-room which she had made her own sitting-room and lighting a cigarette, "that our tenants--I mean Papa's people--are getting rather nasty. Of course, there was that disgraceful business when your mare was killed but I don't mean that--Bill thinks old Fairfax was right in advising Papa to do nothing about that--but about this archaic nonsense of feudal feeling and not selling the property. Of course he's bound to lose by the sale, but the longer he waits the worse it gets." "I don't think it's only feudal feeling--he says he can't afford to sell," began Christian.