Dopsy and Mopsy gushed and laughed and declared it was just the scene for a murder, or a duel, or something dreadful and dramatic. The dogs ran into all manner of perilous places, and had to be called away from the verge of instant death. "Are you fond of aristocratic society. Miss Vandeleur?" asked Angus. Mopsy pleaded guilty to a prejudice in favour of the Upper Ten. "Then allow me to tell you that you were never in the company of so many duchesses and countesses in your life as you are at this moment." Mopsy looked mystified, until Miss Bridgeman explained that these were the names given to slates of particular sizes, great stacks of which stood on either side of them ready for shipment. "How absurd," exclaimed Mopsy. "Everything must have a name, even the slate that roofs your scullery." From the quarry they strolled across the fields to the high road, and the gate of the farm which contains within its boundary the wonderful waterfall called St. Nectan's Kieve. They met the sportsmen coming out of the hollow with well-filled game-bags. Leonard was in high spirits. "So you've all come to meet us," he said, looking at his wife, and from his wife to Angus Hamleigh, with a keen, quick glance, too swift to be remarkable. "Uncommonly good of you. We are going to have a grand year for woodcock, I believe--like the season of 1855, when a farmer at St. Buryan shot fifty-four in one week." "Poor dear little birds!" sighed Mopsy; "I feel so sorry for them." "But that doesn't prevent your eating them, with breadcrumbs and gravy," said Leonard, laughing. "When they are once roasted, it can make no difference who eats them," replied Mopsy; "but I am intensely sorry for them all the same." They all went home together, a cheery procession, with the dogs at their heels. Mr. Hamleigh's efforts to escape from the two damsels who had marked him for their own, were futile: nothing less than sheer brutality would have set him free. They trudged along gaily, one on each side of him; they flattered him, they made much of him--a man must have been stony-hearted to remain untouched by such attentions. Angus was marble, but he could not be uncivil. It was his nature to be gentle to women. Mop and Dop were the kind of girls he most detested--indeed, it seemed to him that no other form of girlhood could be so detestable. They had all the pertness of Bohemia without any of its wit--they had all the audacity of the _demi-monde_, with far inferior attractions. Everything about them was spurious and second-hand--every air and look and tone was put on, like a ribbon or a flower, to attract attention. And could it be that one of these meretricious creatures was angling for him--for him, the Lauzun, the d'Eckmühl, the Prince de Belgioso, of his day--the born dandy, with whom fastidiousness was a sixth sense? Intolerable as the idea of being so pursued was to him, Angus Hamleigh could not bring himself to be rude to a woman.