Cecil was pale with over-excitement, and upon my word she looked more ready to cry than anything when the M. F. H. complimented her with his genial smile, and his cordial "Well done, my dear. I never saw anybody ride better. I used to think my little Blanche the best seat in the country, but she must give place to you--eh, Syd?"
"Miss St. Aubyn does everything well that she attempts," answered the Colonel, in his calm, courteous tone, looking, nevertheless, as stern as if he had just slain his deadliest enemy, instead of having seen a fox killed.
Cecil flushed scarlet, and Cos coming up at that moment, a sadly bespattered object for such an Adonis to present, his coat possessing more the appearance of a bricklayer's than any one else's, after its bath of white mud, she turned to him, and began to laugh and talk with rather wild gaiety. It so chanced that the fox was killed on Horace's land, and we, being not more than a mile and a half off his house, the gallant Cos immediately seized upon the idea of having the object of his idolatry up there to luncheon; and his uncle, and Cecil, and Blanche acquiescing in the arrangement, to his house we went, with such of the field as had ridden up after the finish. Cos trotted forward with the St. Aubyn to show us the way by a short cut through the park, and the echoes of Cecil's laughter rang to Vivian in the rear discussing the run with his father.
A very slap-up place was Cos's baronial hall, for the Cossettings had combined blood and money far many generations; its style and appointments were calculated to back him powerfully in the matrimonial market, and that Cecil might have it all was fully apparent, as he devoted himself to her at the luncheon, which made its appearance at a minute's notice, as if Aladdin had called it up. Cecil seemed disposed to have it too. A deep flush had come up in her cheeks; she smiled her brightest smiles on Cos; she drank his Moët's, bending her graceful head with a laughing pledge to her host; she talked so fast, so gaily, such repartee, such sarcasms, such jeux de mots, that it was well no women were at table to sit in judgment on her afterwards. A deadly paleness came over Vivian's face as he listened to her--but he sat at the bottom of the board where Cecil could not see him. His father, the gayest and best-tempered of mortals, laughed and applauded her; the other men were charmed with a style and a wit so new to them; and Cos, of course, was in the seventh heaven.