Presently Mr. Carteret got up and took the newspapers. He was annoyed with himself and annoyed with Penwiper. It was the dog that called up these disquieting ideas. The dog was irrevocably associated with Miss Rivers. He had given her Penwiper as an engagement present, and when the affair ended, she had sent him back. He ought not to have taken him back. He felt that it had been a great mistake to become interested again in Penwiper, as it had been a great mistake to become interested at all in Miss Rivers. He continued to peruse the newspapers till he found that he was reading a paragraph for the third time. Then he got up and went out to the stables. March was drawing to a close, and with it the hunting season, when there dawned one of those celestial mornings that are appropriate to May, but in England sometimes appear earlier. It brought to the meet five hundred English ladies and gentlemen, complaining that it was too hot to hunt. In this great assemblage Mr. Carteret found himself riding about, saying “good morning,” automatically inquiring of Lady Martingale about the chestnut mare’s leg, parrying Mrs. Cutcliffe’s willingness to let him a house, and avoiding Captain Coper’s anxiety to sell him a horse. He was not aware that he was restless or that he threaded his way through one group after another, acting as usually he did not act, until Major Hammerslea asked him if he was looking for his second horseman. Then he rode off by himself, and stood still. He had seen pretty much everybody that was out, yet he had come upon none of the Chilliecote party. However, as he asked himself twice, “What was that to him?” A few minutes later they jogged on to covert and began to draw. A fox went away, the hounds followed him for two fields, then flashed over and checked. After that they could make nothing of it. The fox-hunting authorities said that there was no scent.