They
had many cavaliers who came to talk with them for a few minutes, to tell
them what was doing or not doing yonder where the hounds were hidden in
thicket or coppice; but Henri de Malfort was their most constant attendant.
He rarely left them, and dawdled through the earlier half of an October
day, walking his horse from point to point, or dismounting at sheltered
corners to stand and talk at Lady Fareham's side, with a patience that made
Angela wonder at the contrast between English headlong eagerness, crashing
and splashing through hedge and brook, and French indifference.
"I have not Fareham's passion for mud," he explained to her, when she
remarked upon his lack of interest in the chase, even when the music of the
hounds was ringing through wood and valley, now close beside them, anon
diminishing in the distance, thin in the thin air. "If he comes not home
at dark plastered with mire from boots to eyebrows he will cry, like
Alexander, 'I have lost a day.'"
Partridge-hawking in the wide fields between Chilton and Nettlebed was more
to Malfort's taste, and it was a sport for which Lady Fareham expressed a
certain enthusiasm, and for which she attired herself to the perfection of
picturesque costume.
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