Chapter 7 - Page 2

the
questionings of their wives on subjects pertaining to Court fashions
and behaviour and,--perhaps somewhat gravely,--danced attendance on the
daughters, who most of them, it is true, were used to less courtly
manners and voted him in private far too grave and majestic for such a
beauty.

"He hath a way of bowing that would give one a fright, were his eyes
not so handsome and his smile so sweet," said one lovely ardent hoyden.
"Lord! just to watch him standing near with that noble grave look on
his face, and not giving one a thought, makes one's heart go pit-a-pat.
A man hath no right to be such a beauty--and to be so, and to be a
Duke's son, too, is a burning shame. 'Tis wicked that one man should
have so much to give to one woman."

'Twas but a week before Roxholm left his kinsman's house, that they
spent a day together hunting with a noted pack over the borders of
Gloucestershire. The sport was in a neighbourhood where the gentry were
hunting-mad, and chased foxes as many days of the week as fortune and
weather favoured them.

"'Tis a rough country," said my Lord Dunstanwolde, as they rode forth,
"and some of those who hunt are wild livers and no credit to their
rank, but there is fine old blood among them, and some of the hardest
riders and boldest leapers England knows." Suddenly he seemed to
remember something and turned with an exclamation. "Upon my soul!" he
said, "till this moment I had forgot. I am too sober an old fogy to
hunt with them when I have no young blood near to spur me. Sir Jeoffry
Wildairs will be with them--if he has not yet broke his neck."

The country they hunted over proved indeed rough, and the sport
exciting. Roxholm had never seen wilder riding and more daring leaps,
and it had also happened that he had not yet gone a-hunting with so
boisterous and rollicking a body of gentlemen. Their knowledge of dogs,
foxes, and horseflesh was plainly absolute, but they had no Court
manners, being of that clan of country gentry of which London saw but
little. Nearly all the sportsmen were big men and fine ones, with
dare-devil bearing, loud voices, and a tendency to loose and profane
language. They roared friendly oaths at each other, had brandy flasks
on their persons on which they pulled freely, and, their spirits being
heightened thereby, exchanged jokes and allusions not too seemly.

Before the fox was found, Roxholm had marked this and observed also
that half a dozen more of the best mounted men were the roughest on the
field, being no young scapegraces and frolickers, but men past forty,
who wore the aspect of reprobate livers and hard drinkers, and who were
plainly boon companions and more intimate