Alas! he was to see little of Miss Cunyngham that night.  As soon as dinner was over—­and Sir Hugh and his satellite had left the dining-room to enter up the game-book, write labels for special friends, and generally finish up the business of the day—­Lady Adela proposed a game of Dumb Crambo; and in this she was heartily backed up by the Lestranges, for Miss Georgie seemed to think that the mantle of Kitty Clive had descended upon her shoulders, while her brother evidently regarded himself as a facetious person.  Speedily it appeared, however, that there was to be a permanent and stationary audience.  Lord Fareborough—­especially after dinner, when his nervous system was still in dark deliberation as to what it meant to do with him—­was too awful a personage to be approached; Honnor Cunyngham good-humoredly said that she was too stupid to join in; and Lord Rockminster declared that if that was her excuse, it applied much more obviously to himself.  Accordingly, the remaining members of the house-party had to form the entertainers; and never had Lionel entered into any pastime with so little zest.  These people could not act a bit, and yet he had to coach them; and then he and they had to go into the drawing-room and perform their antics before that calm-browed young lady (who nevertheless regarded the proceedings with the most friendly interest) and her companion, the stolid young lord.  He could not help acknowledging to himself that Miss Honnor Cunyngham and Lord Rockminster formed a remarkably handsome couple as they sat together there on a couch at right angles with the fireplace; but the distinguished appearance of the audience did not console him for the consciousness that the performers were making themselves absurd.  He was impatient, ashamed, of the whole affair.  Dark and sullen thoughts went flashing through his brain of saving up every penny he could get hold of and going away into some savage wilderness in Ross or Sutherland, to be seen of actors and amateurs no more.  His gun and his rod would be his sole companions; his library would consist of St. John, Colquhoun, “Stonehenge,” and Francis (not of Assisi); by moor and stream he would earn his own subsistence; and theatres and fashionable life and the fantastic aspirations and ambitions of les Precieuses Ridicules would be banished from him forever.  But fortunately a nine-o’clock dinner had driven this foolish entertainment late, so that it did not last long; the ladies were unanimously willing to retire; the gentlemen thereupon trooped off to the gun-room to have a smoke and a glass of whiskey and soda water; and very soon thereafter the deep-breathing calm of the whole household told that the labors of the Twelfth were over.

CHAPTER IX.

VENATOR IMMEMOR.