“Oh!” There was no shade of feeling in the monosyllable. “I remember the letter you speak of,” he went on very quietly; “what I cannot understand is why you have told me of it? I can hardly think it was for the sake of saying something unpleasant.” “It was because I am fond of Lady Susan,” she said desperately. In the silence that followed it seemed to her as though she had thrown a heavy stone into deep water, without hope of result beyond the broken mirror and the flagging ripple. CHAPTER XI Next morning, while the last of three white frosts was vanishing from the grass, Hugh stood in the hall at French’s Court, pinning a bunch of violets into his red coat. Tops and waistcoat, tie and pin, obeyed to a hair-breadth the minute rigour of male fashion in the hunting-field, the violets made their bold yet not exasperating contrast with the scarlet, and Hugh’s pale face was almost picturesque in its gay and vivid setting. Taking up his flask, he went to the dining-room and filled it at the sideboard with old liqueur brandy; he poured out a glass from the same bottle, and was going to raise it to his lips, when he heard voices outside the open door. One of the voices was his wife’s, and he heard it with that sense of severance from her affairs that had been his since he and his gun-cases had reappeared at French’s Court the evening before. He was not usually sensitive to social temperatures, but it seemed to him that there was something flat and ungenial about the whole party. Bunbury was spasmodically agreeable, Slaney was silent, his wife was heavy-eyed and listless; he encouraged and nurtured the bitter conviction that no one wanted him. “I suppose you’re riding Gambler to-day?” Major Bunbury was saying to some one in the hall. “No,” replied Lady Susan, speaking rather quickly and indistinctly, “I’m riding Mr. Glasgow’s old horse, Solomon, you know. He came over last night. I’ve always wanted to try him.” Bunbury whistled a few bars of a tune, and knocked down things in the whip-rack. “Hugh’s riding that grey,” she went on; “it’s quite absurd. He can’t do anything with him, and he only makes an exhibition of himself.” “Oh, the horse is all right now,” replied Bunbury, lowering his voice; “he was very green that first day that Hugh rode him.” “Very well,” she said, “you’ll see. He won’t take that horse across two fences to-day.” Bunbury passed on out of the hall door, and left Lady Susan standing on the doorstep. She looked up at the cold blue and uncertain grey of the sky, and out at the ruffled and hazy sea, the strong light showing lines of sleeplessness about her eyes; then, turning back into the house, she met her husband. She did not suppose that he had overheard her, yet she was aware of something in his lonely face that she did not care to look at. She went to the table and took up her gloves without speaking.