Tuke leaned and took the impassive form under the arms. With his foot he shuffled the limp trailing legs over into the pit, and so lowered the body with a single heave. It went down unresistingly, save for a broken moan or two, and sank into a huddled heap at the bottom. He raised the flap, and stood an instant looking down. There was little motion below him, or sign of life but a weak fitful whimpering. Feeling as one who stubbornly signs his own soul to the devil, he closed the pit-mouth, secured it, and walked away with his heart thumping. And there rose up to and pursued him a long dreary whine like that of a dog baying the moon. CHAPTER XXI. It would seem something a matter for a wonder that a lady of Miss Royston’s refinement and varied capacity for ideals should be content to lead so long an annual series of her days to a pastoral retirement. A month in London about the chill opening of the year, and another, later, at Epsom, Tunbridge Wells, or, perhaps, Newmarket, would comprise the wonted period of her absence from “Chatters.” This may have been so according to choice or necessity; but it was probably dictated by the first in greatest degree. It is true her brother’s smug, good-humoured little face misexpressed a character very fairly endowed with determination. He was, and desired to be, a country squire; and, though he subscribed with infinite complacency to the extremest fashions of the town, it was only that he might thereby hold his neighbours to the right quantity of respect in alluding to his position amongst them. He would figure in their eyes, no Will Levett with a cudgel for Assembly Rooms, and still less a London fribble sporting with squirearchy; but a courteous lord of acres who should exemplify the best characteristics of both and the exaggerations of neither. But his heart was with the country, and therefore it might be supposed that Miss Angela, in her rustic retirement, made a cloisteral virtue of necessity. It might be, and wrongfully, I believe. For this young lady’s tastes held much in common with those of her brother, enjoying different interests, but adapted to similar conditions. Perhaps she found a world of trees and flowers most fitting to her many excursions in romance. Perhaps she preferred conducting her own chorus of praise at “Chatters” to playing upon heart-strings in the crowded orchestras of fashion. Certainly she never had a mind to fiddle second, and, possibly, shrunk on that account from the necessity of ever assuming herself out-rivalled in that claim for leadership so passionately advanced by successive strings of town _élégantes_. However that may be, her capacity for situations was extreme; her sensitiveness to any least appeal of the emotions a perpetual excuse for what, in a less gifted creature, would have passed for a most engaging inconstancy. Indeed, to thwart her in some pursuit of an ideal, was to feel the full force of the passion that impelled her to the chase.