"Weren't you charmed to find us all so gay and bright here--nothing to suggest the sad break-up you had last year. I felt so intensely sorry for you all--yet I was selfish enough to be glad I had left before it happened. Did they--don't think me morbid for asking--did they bring him home here?" "Yes, they brought him home." "And in which room did they put him? One always wants to know these things, though it can do one no good." "In the Blue Room." "The second from the end of the corridor, next but one to mine; that's rather awfully near. Do you believe in spiritual influences? Have you ever had a revelation? Good gracious! is it really so late? Everybody seems to be going." "Let me get your candle," said Leonard, eagerly, making a dash for the hall. And so ended his first evening at home with that imbecile refrain--Bé-bé-bé, repeating itself in his ears. CHAPTER VII. "GAI DONC; LA VOYAGEUSE, AU COUP DU PÈLERIN!" When Mr. Tregonell came to the breakfast room next morning he found everybody alert with the stir and expectation of an agreeable day. The Trevena harriers were to meet for the first time this season, and everybody was full of that event. Christabel, Mrs. Torrington, and the St. Aubyn girls were breakfasting in their habits and hats: whips and gloves were lying about on chairs and side-tables--everybody was talking, and everybody seemed in a hurry. De Cazalet looked gorgeous in olive corduroy and Newmarket boots. Mr. St. Aubyn looked business-like in a well-worn red coat and mahogany tops, while the other men inclined to dark shooting jackets, buckskins, and Napoleons. Mr. FitzJesse, in a morning suit that savoured of the study rather than the hunting field, contemplated these Nimrods with an amused smile; but the Reverend St. Bernard beheld them not without pangs of envy. He, too, had been in Arcadia; he, too, had followed the hounds in his green Oxford days, before he joined that band of young Anglicans who he doubted not would by-and-by be as widely renowned as the heroes of the Tractarian movement. "You are going to the meet?" inquired Leonard, as his wife handed him his coffee. "Do you think I would take the trouble to put on my habit in order to ride from here to Trevena?" exclaimed Christabel. "I am going with the rest of them, of course. Emily St. Aubyn will show me the way." "But you have never hunted." "Because your dear mother was too nervous to allow me. But I have ridden over every inch of the ground. I know my horse, and my horse knows me. You needn't be afraid." "Mrs. Tregonell is one of the finest horsewomen I ever saw," said de Cazalet. "It is a delight to ride by her side. Are not you coming with us?" he asked. "Yes, I'll ride after you," said Leonard. "I forgot all about the harriers. Nobody told me they were to begin work this morning."