She despised a man whose only delight was in horse and hound, gun and fishing-tackle.

Molly would have cared very little for the guns or the fishing-tackle perhaps in the abstract; but she cared for everything that interested Maulevrier, even to the bagful of rats which were let loose in the stable-yard sometimes, for the education of a particularly game fox-terrier.
There was plenty of talk and laughter at the dinner-table, while the Countess and Lady Lesbia conversed gravely and languidly in the dimly-lighted drawing-room.

The dinner was excellent, and both travellers were ravenous.

They had eaten nothing since breakfast, and had driven from Windermere on the top of the coach in the keen evening air.

When the sharp edge of the appetite was blunted, Maulevrier began to talk of his adventures since he and Molly had last met.