Ravenshoe. By Henry Kingsley.

60 RAVENSHOE.
Then they turned, and rode full speed: soon they heard the
mighty, hollow-sounding hoofs behind, that came rapidly towards
them, devouring space. Then the colt rushed by them in his
pride, with his chin on his chest, hard held, and his hind feet
coming forward under his girth every stride, and casting the turf
behind him in showers. Then Adelaide's horse, after a few mad
plunges, bolted, overtook the colt, and actually raced him for a
few hundred yards; then the colt was pulled up on a breezy hill,
and they all stood a little together talking and congratulating one.another on the beauty of the horse.
Charles and Adelaide rode away together over the downs, intending to make a little detour, and so lengthen their ride. They
had had no chance of conversation since they parted at the conservatory door, and they took it up. nearly where they had left it.
Adelaide began, and, I may say, went on, too, as she had most of
the talking.
" I should like to be a duchess; then I should be mistress of
the only thing I am afraid of."
"What is that?"
"Poverty," said she;" that is my only terror, and that is my
inevitable fate."
"I should have thought, Adelaide, that you were too high-spirited to care for that, or anything."
"Ah, you don't know; all my relations are poor. I know
what it is; Iknow what it would be for a beauty like me."
" You will never be poor or friendless while Lady Ascot
lives."
" How long will that be? MIy home now depends very much
on that horse; 0, if I were only a man, I would welcome poverty; it would force me to action."
Charles blushed. Not many days before, Marston and he had
a battle royal, in which the former had said, that the only hope
for Charles was that he should go two or three times without his
dinner, and be made to earn it, and that as long as he had a
" mag" to bless himself with, he would always be a lazy, useless
humbug; and now here was a young lady uttering the same
atrocious sentiments. He called attention to the.prospect.
Three hundred feet below them, Father Thames was winding
along under the downs and yellow woodlands, past chalk quarry
and gray farm-house, blood-red beneath the setting sun; a soft,
rich, autumnal haze was over everything; the smoke from the
distant village hung like a curtain of pearl across the valley;
and the long, straight, dark wood, that crowned the high, gray
wold, was bathed in a dim purple mist on its darkest side; and
to perfect the air of dreamy stillness, some distant bells sent their
golden sound floating on the peaceful air. It was a quiet day in