"
"Do I?" she answered, laughing. "Well, that is curious, because I feel
like Comedy herself."
"There's something wrong with that woman," thought the Colonel to
himself as he extracted two couple of snipe from his capacious coat
tails. "I wonder what it is."
Just then Mr. Quest and Edward Cossey passed out into the garden
talking.
"Here are the snipe, Mrs. Quest," he said. "I have had rather good
luck. I killed four couple and missed two couple more; but then I had
a new gun, and one can never shoot so well with a new gun."
"Oh, thank you," she said, "do pull out the 'painters' for me. I like
to put them in my riding hat, and I can never find them myself."
"Very well," he answered, "but I must go into the garden to do it;
there is not light enough here. It gets dark so soon now."
Accordingly he stepped out through the window, and began to hunt for
the pretty little feathers which are to be found at the angle of a
snipe's wing.
"Is that the new gun, Colonel Quaritch?" said Mrs. Quest presently;
"what a beautiful one!"
"Be careful," he said, "I haven't taken the cartridges out."
If he had been looking at her, which at that moment he was not, Harold
would have seen her stagger and catch at the wall for support. Then he
would have seen an awful and malevolent light of sudden determination
pass across her face.
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