One spot seemed to him a trifle lower than the rest, and setting his teeth, he put the horse at it. The effort to command himself and not to pull the horse’s head as he came to the jump amounted in its way to agony; he did not know if he were glad or sorry when the grey, soured by the day’s misadventures, swerved from the fence and bucketed round the field, pulling hard and trying to get his head down. Hugh stopped him and dismounted. He would not think of what he was going to do, but there was a hard knot in his throat as he walked the grey across the field. He tied the lash of his whip to the reins, and climbing on to the fence, led him over it. The horse followed him as lightly and quietly as a dog, and stood still to let him untie the lash. His hand shook, and he did it awkwardly, while the lump in his throat grew bigger. The events of the morning were present with him. The jovial breakfast-table at which he had played so sorry a part; the look of the grey horse bucking as he was led round to the door; the cold, sick feeling when the hounds opened on the fox in covert; the look of Glasgow’s back as he and the others disappeared over the hill, leaving him stuck at the first fence, engaged in that half-hearted battle with his horse that had resulted in a fall for them both. He hated them all--Bunbury, Glasgow, the road-riding faction, who had volunteered with horrible sympathy to show him the short cuts: he almost hated his wife for the easy confidence in him that he knew he did not deserve. “I’ll get over it,” he said to himself, swearing furiously and futilely. “After all, this is pretty nearly the first time I’ve been on a horse since that smash. Damn you, you brute, keep quiet!” This to the grey, who was fidgeting and pulling, with his ears pricked in expectation of anything and everything. “I’ve never had a right feel about a horse since that time.” He pulled out his flask and took a drink--his wife had given it to him--and as he put it back he thought, with almost the bitterest pang of all, that she would never understand--that he could never tell her. The note of the horn struck on his ear, and, looking back through the rain, he saw the hounds coming quietly along the road behind him. Lady Susan and Mr. Glasgow were riding in front of them, and he knew that the time had come when he would have to begin to tell lies. CHAPTER IV Slaney was reading Swinburne’s “Atalanta in Calydon.” It was Sunday afternoon, and she had dined in the middle of the day. It would soon be time to get ready for afternoon service.