70 THE SILVER FOX 



as of despair was unmistakable about him. 

 As Slaney looked at him, a hound, not far 

 ojff in the covert, gave two or three con- 

 tralto notes in succession, and at the same 

 moment there was a rustle in the bracken, 

 a few yards in front of her. A grey face 

 parted the brown fern and looked out at 

 her; a fox's face, with its oblique crafty 

 eyes and sharp refined muzzle, but the fur 

 was silver-grey. 



*'A thing like an Arctic fox," Slaney 

 heard Lady Susan's voice declaiming on the 

 ice at Hurlingham. 



The fox slipped down off the fence through 

 the bracken, crossed the road with a dainty 

 whisk of its grey brush, glided up the 

 opposite bank like a shadow, and was gone. 

 A cold and prickling sensation passed over 

 Slaney, that feeling of ''a wind from the 

 say coming bechuxt the skin an' the blood " 

 that old Dan Quin had felt. It died away, 

 and left her with a bounding heart and a 

 reddened cheek, and a sense of intense 

 participation in the events of the moment, 



