“What does that matter?” exclaimed Juliet. “You needn’t go out any oftener because you are a member of the Hunt. There are men who appear scarcely half a dozen times in a season—men who have left the neighbourhood, and only come down for a run now and then for old sake’s sake.” “I’ll think it over,” faltered Harrington. “Don’t say anything to Sir Henry about it just yet.” “As you please; but I shan’t dance with you at the ball if you wear a black coat,” said Juliet, giving her bridle a sharp little shake and trotting forward to join her brother. Mahmud, discomposed by that sudden start, gave a shambling elderly shy; Harrington pulled him up into a walk, and rode sulkily on, and allowed the other three riders to melt from him in the shades of evening. Yes, she was beautiful exceedingly, and it would be promotion for a country solicitor to be engaged to a girl of such high standing; but he felt that his relations with her were hedged round with difficulty. She was expensive herself, and a cause of expense in others. She had spent the brightest years of her girlhood in visiting in country houses, where everything was on a grander scale than at the Mount. She had escaped from the barrenness of home to the mansions of noblemen and millionaires. She had strained all her energies towards one aim—to be popular, and to be asked to good houses. She had run the gauntlet of most of the best smoke-rooms in the three kingdoms, and had been talked about everywhere as the handsome Miss Baldwin. Yet her twenty-seventh birthday had sounded, and she was Miss Baldwin still. Half a dozen times she had fancied herself upon the eve of a great success—such a marriage as would at once exalt her to the pinnacle of social distinction—and at the last moment, as it seemed, the man had changed his mind. Some malicious mother of ugly daughters, or disappointed spinster, had told the eligible suitor “things” about Miss Baldwin—harmless little deviations from the rigid lines of maidenly etiquette, and the suitor had cried off, fearing in his own succinct speech that he was going to be “had.” At seven and twenty, damaged by the reputation of failure—spoken of by the initiated as “that handsome girl Maltravers so nearly married, don’t you know?”—Miss Baldwin felt that all hope of a great match was over. The funeral bell of ambition had tolled. She began to grow reckless; eat her dinner and took her dry champagne with a masculine gusto; smoked as many cigarettes as a secretary of legation; read all the new French novels, and talked about them unreservedly with her partners; was keen upon racing, and loved euchre and nap. She had half made up her mind to throw herself away upon the first wealthy cotton-spinner she might meet up in the North when she allowed herself to be touched by Harrington Dalbrook’s somewhat boyish devotion, and began to wonder whether it might not be well for her to end her chequered career by a love match.