Flora did not shrink either from the glance or the
meaning implied in the sarcasm.
"If I were looking for an Endymion, now--" she said archly, as she
playfully cantered over a few hounds and leaped a five-barred gate.
Guy whispered a few words, inaudible to the rest of the party, and,
curvetting slightly, cleverly cleared two of the huntsmen in a
flying leap, galloped up the front steps of the mansion, and
dashing at full speed through the hall leaped through the drawing-
room window and rejoined me, languidly, on the lawn.
"Be careful of Flora Billingsgate," he said to me, in low stern
tones, while his pitiless eye shot a baleful fire. "Gardez vous!"
"Gnothi seauton," I replied calmly, not wishing to appear to be
behind him in perception or verbal felicity.
Guy started off in high spirits. He was well carried. He and the
first whip, a ten-stone man, were head and head at the last fence,
while the hounds were rolling over their fox a hundred yards
farther in the open.
But an unexpected circumstance occurred. Coming back, his chestnut
mare refused a ten-foot wall. She reared and fell backward. Again
he led her up to it lightly; again she refused, falling heavily
from the coping.
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