After luncheon a proposal was made to go and see some new horses which Captain Bligh had inspected when last in Torquay, and which he thought might be obtained as bargains. So most of the party adjourned to the stable-yard, where these horses had been brought; and the visit ended in a pair of them being put to, and Sir Charles and Mrs. Hammond mounting the phaeton to which they were harnessed. The horses were young and fresh, and plunged a great deal at starting; but Sir Charles had them well in hand, and with his companion by his side and a groom in the back-seat, went flying down the avenue. It was full an hour before they returned, and Sir Charles's verdict on the pair was that they were too hot to hold. He had had all his work, he said, to keep them at all within bounds. Mrs. Hammond looked flushed and elated; but she went straight up to Lady Mitford, and told her how she had enjoyed the drive, and was full of praises of Sir Charles's powers of coachmanship. That evening Sir Charles took Mrs. Hammond in to the dining-room, and addressed his conversation principally to her. He drank a great deal of wine both with and after dinner, and was in more boisterous spirits than any of his friends had yet seen him. When they went into the drawing-room he made straight for Mrs. Hammond's chair, and there he remained the whole evening, talking to her in a lowered tone, and regarding her with glances the fire of which had by no means been subdued by the quantity of claret he had drunk. Poor Georgie! The events of this day, culminating as they were, had totally upset her, and had reduced her very much to the same condition as when she begged Alsager to be her charioteer to Egremont Priory. There could be no mistake about it now. Surely it was a flagrant case; and the colour flushed in her cheeks as she saw Mrs. Masters's shoulder-shrugs and marked Lord Dollamore's ill-disguised cynical manner. Poor Georgie! She asked Mrs. Charteris to sing, and sat and listened to her as usual, and thanked her at the end of the performance; and she chatted with the Tyrrell girls, and she took the deepest interest in Mrs. Masters's embroidery,--and all the time her heart was sick within her, and she kept stealing glances at the couple seated in the embrasure of the window, with their heads so nearly touching. All present noticed her state of mind; but no one understood it or pitied it like Laurence Alsager, who began to confess to himself that what Dollamore had prophesied at the club was undoubtedly coming true, so far as Mitford was concerned; and did, not the wife's future, even in Lord Dollamore's prophecy, hinge upon the husband's conduct? It was a most horrible shame; but how on earth was he to protest against it? He had no position to enable him to do anything of the kind. There was only one thing that he could do, and that was to speak to Laura Hammond. He could do that; it might not be of much use, but he would do it.