“Cruel Mrs. Winter!” replied Foxwell. “But ’tis not for you to speak of being dead and buried. You know not what rustication is. You have passed, I suppose, a month or so out of the world, and are now going back to it; while I have been a recluse in this county these two years, and may be so for the rest of my life. The town, as you say, has forgot me, and God knows whether I shall ever return. See what poverty brings one to, and take warning.” The reader is doubtless aware that country-house life did not occupy in the eighteenth century the place it does to-day in the routine of the “smart” world. People of fashion had their town houses and their country-seats then, of course; but many such were wont to pursue more exclusively the one life or the other,—to be town mice who sometimes went to the country, or country mice who sometimes came up to town. Those who preferred the gaiety of the town were more prone to count that time lost which they had to pass out of it, and to look down upon those who spent most of their days in the country. When the town mice left London by choice, it was to take the waters at Bath, or to make the “grand tour” of the Continent. Week-end house-parties had not come in, there were no seaside resorts, and the rich did not hie themselves in August to the moors of Scotland. “Beyond Hyde Park all is desert,” said the fop in the play; and Robert Foxwell and his friends were so far of _Sir Fopling’s_ mind; they valued wit, and used “fox-hunter” as a name of scorn. No wonder, then, that Foxwell declared himself miserable in his exile. “’Tis for your sins, Bob,” said Lady Strange. “You were a monstrously wicked man in London, as I remember.” Mrs. Betteridge now contrived to insinuate herself into the notice of Rashleigh, addressing him as “my lord,” and begging to know the wishes of himself and their ladyships upon the matter of dinner and rooms. He turned to Lady Strange. “What say you, Cousin Di? I suppose we shall be driving on as soon as we have dined—” “You shall dine with me,” broke in Foxwell. “I’ll not lose sight of your faces. I don’t meet a civilized being once in an age.—You will set more places, landlady: my friends will dine here.” Without waiting for their assent, he motioned the landlady out to the passage, and there gave further orders. The attention of the three Londoners now fell upon the two figures at the window. Miss Foxwell, quite ignored by her uncle since the arrival of his friends, had remained where she was, regarding the newcomers with a side glance in which there was no great joy at their advent. Now that she saw their looks directed to her, she turned her face again toward the street, with a slight blush at the scrutiny. “What a pretty girl it is at the window,” whispered Lady Strange to her companions. “And what is she doing here with Foxwell?” said Mrs. Winter, eying the young lady critically. “The dog!—he is to be envied,” said Rashleigh.