Five minutes later, Mr Ravenscar knocked on the front door. It was opened to him by Silas Wantage, and he walked into the house with his usual air of calm assurance.
Mr Wantage made a sound as of one choking, and stood stock-still, staring at him with bulging eyes. Mr Ravenscar me this bemused stare with a look of irony, but gave no sign of recognition. He merely held out his hat, and his cane, an waited for Silas to take them.
Mr Wantage found his voice. “Well, I’ll be damned!” he muttered.
“Probably,” said Mr Ravenscar. “Have the goodness to take my hat and cane!”
Mr Wantage relieved him of these, and said helplessly: “I dunno how you done it, but I won’t say as I’m sorry. It goes against the grain with me to tie up a cove as can plant me as wisty a facer as you did, sir!”
Mr Ravenscar paid no heed to this confession, but glanced at his reflection in the mirror, adjusted the pin in his cravat, smoothed the ruffles over his bandaged hands, and strolled across the hall to the supper-room.
His entrance created quite a stir. His hostess, who was sipping claret in the hope of steadying her nerves, choked, and turned purple in the face; Mr Lucius Kennet, standing by the buffet with a plate of salmon in his hand, said “Good God!” in a startled voice, and dropped his fork; the Honourable Berkeley Crewe exclaimed, and demanded to be told what had kept Mr Ravenscar from his dinner engagement; Sir James Filey was thought by those standing nearest to him to have sworn under his breath; and several persons called out to know what had befallen Ravenscar. Only Miss Grantham showed no sign of perturbation, but bade the late-comer a cool good evening.
He bowed over her hand, looked with a little amusement at Lady Bellingham, who was still choking, and said: “I’m sorry, Crewe. I was unavoidably detained.”
“But what in the world kept you?” asked Crewe. “I thought you had forgotten you were to dine with me, and sent round to your house to remind you. They said you had set out just after dusk!”
“The truth is, I met with a slight accident,” replied Ravenscar, taking a glass of Burgundy from the tray which a waiter was handing him. As he raised it to his lips, the ruffle fell back from his hand, and his bandages were seen.
“Good God, what have you done to your hand, Max?” asked Lord Mablethorpe, in swift alarm.
“Oh, nothing very much!” Ravenscar replied. “I told you I had met with a slight accident.”
“Have you been set upon?” demanded Crewe. “Is that it?”
“Yes, that is it,” said Ravenscar.
“I hope it may not impair your skill with the ribbons!” said Filey.
“I hope not, indeed,” answered Ravenscar, with one of his derisive looks.
“Gad, Ravenscar, do you suppose it was an attempt to stop you driving tomorrow?” exclaimed a gentleman in an old fashioned bag-wig.
“Something of that nature, I fancy,” said Ravenscar, unable to resist an impulse to glance at Miss Grantham.
“What the devil do you mean by that, Horley?” demanded Sir James belligerently.
The gentleman in the bag-wig looked surprised. “Why, only that there has been a great deal of money laid on the race, and such things do happen! What should I mean?”
Filey’s high colour faded; he muttered something about having misunderstood, and swung out of the room, saying that he would try his luck at the hazard-table.
“What’s the matter with Filey?” inquired Crewe. “He’s become devilish bad-tempered all at once!”
“Oh, haven’t you heard?” said a man in an orange-and-white striped waistcoat. “You know he was mad to marry one of the Laxton girls? Pretty child, only just out. Well, the Laxtons are trying to hush it up, but I had it from young Arnold himself that the filly’s bolted!”
“Bolted?” repeated Crewe.
“Vanished, my dear fellow. Can’t be found! No wonder our friend’s sore!”
“Well, I don’t blame her,” said Crewe. “Filey and a chit out of the schoolroom! Damme, it’s little better than a rape! But where did she bolt to?”
“No one knows. I told you she’d vanished. And the best of it is the Laxton’s daren’t set the Runners on to her track for fear of the story’s leaking out! Wouldn’t look well at all forcing a child of that age into marriage with a man of Filey’s reputation!”
“It wouldn’t come to that!” objected Mr Horley.
“Oh, wouldn’t it, by God? You don’t know Lady Laxton, when there’s a fortune at stake,” chuckled the man in the orange-striped waistcoat.
Lady Bellingham, feeling that her cup was now full to overflowing, cast a despairing look towards her niece, and wondered why a mouthful of cold partridge should taste of ashes.
“It is not to be supposed,” said Lord Mablethorpe carefully, “that Filey will wish to marry any female who shows herself so averse from his suit.”
“If you think that, you don’t know Filey!” said Crewe. “He would think it added a spice to matrimony.”
Under cover of this general conversation, Lucius Kennet had moved across the room to Miss Grantham’s side, and now said in her ear: “Do you tell me you persuaded him to give up the bills, me dear? Sure, you could have knocked me down with a feather when he walked in as cool as you please!”
“I have not got the bills,” she replied.
“You have not got them? Then what the devil ails you to be letting him go, Deb?”
“I didn’t. He escaped.”
He looked at her with suspicion. “He did not, then! I tied his hands meself. It’s lying you are, Deb: you set him free!”
“No, I did not. Only he asked me for a candle, and I let him have one, never dreaming what he meant to do! He burned the cord round his wrists, and when I went down to the cellar he was free: There was nothing I could do.”
He gave a low whistle. “It’s the broth of a boy he is, and no mistake! So that’s why his hands are bandaged! Will he be able to drive?”
“He says so. I am sure I do not care!”
She was disinclined to converse further on the subject, and moved away, only to fall a victim to Lord Mablethorpe, who drew her into a corner of the room to ask her if she had heard what had been said about Phoebe Laxton’s disappearance. She answered rather curtly that she did not know what it should signify, but Mablethorpe was not satisfied, and said the question of Phoebe’s future was troubling him very much.
Miss Grantham was pleased to hear this, but she had borne much that evening, and felt disinclined to embark on a discussion of Phoebe’s affairs in a crowded supper-room. She answered rather briefly, therefore, and incurred Lord Mablethorpe’s censure for the first time in her life.
“It’s very well, Deb, but she cannot stay here for ever, and I don’t think you are bothering your head much about her,” his lordship said gravely.
“I have other things to think of,” said Deborah.
“I am sure you must, but she has no one but you to think for her, or to take care of her, remember!”
This was said with a gentle dignity which Miss Grantham had not met before in her youthful swain. She reflected that close association with Miss Laxton was investing his lordship with a sense of responsibility, and liked him the better for it. “It is very hard to know what to do for the best,” she said. “I quite thought that her parents would have relented. They may still do so.”
A little crease appeared between his brows. “Even so-!” He paused, and went on again after a moment’s hesitation: “She has confided in me to some extent, Deb. I dare say she may have told you more. But I have heard enough to realize that she can never be happy at home. Those parents-! If it were not Filey it would very likely be someone as bad. Lady Laxton cares for nothing but money. I should feel we had betrayed Phoebe if we let her go back. She is not like you, she needs someone to protect her.”
This naive pronouncement made Miss Grantham feel much inclined to inform him that to have someone to protect her was every woman’s dream, but she refrained, and said instead that she did not know what was to be done. She added that she must go upstairs to the card-rooms, and left him feeling more dissatisfied with her than he would have believed, a week before, that he could be.
If the truth were told, his lordship had been finding his inamorata a little trying ever since the evening they had spent at Vauxhall. Her behaviour then had certainly shocked him and although he had never again seen her assume such peculiar manners, he could not help wondering sometimes if then might be a recurrence the next time she found herself it elevated circles.
Then there was her manner towards himself, which occasionally chafed him. She was often rather impatient with him, as though she found his youth and inexperience exasperating; and she had developed a habit of ordering him about more than he liked. There had even been moments when the memory of a governess he had had in early childhood most forcibly recurred in his mind. He was by no means a fool, and he had begun to perceive that Miss Grantham’s seniority gave her an advantage over him which might well preclude hi assuming the mastery over his own establishment. Lord Mablethorpe had a sweetness of temper which made him universally liked; he was very young still, and diffident; but he was no weakling, and he was growing up fast.
Miss Grantham, well aware of these facts, was riding him hard as she thought proper, allowing the decision and forcefulness of her own character to throw Miss Laxton’s gentle: and more yielding nature into strong relief. Mablethorpe, she knew, could not fail to make comparison between them; and it would be an odd thing if a young man who was bullied, in a kind way, by one woman, did not find the admiration and dependence of another a refreshing change.
He did find it refreshing. Miss Laxton’s fragility, her helplessness, her implicit trust in him, had made an instant appeal to his chivalry. From the first moment of meeting her, when she had clung to his hand, he had felt protective towards her. She had said that she knew herself to be safe with him, and later she had said that she would be guided by his judgement, and had asked for his advice. No one had ever expressed a desire to benefit by Lord Mablethorpe’s advice before; and since his mother, his uncle Julius, and his cousin Max were all persons of decided opinions, he had never received any very noticeable encouragement to put forward his own views on subjects of major importance. His life had, naturally enough, been ordered for him, and although he was fast approaching his majority it would be some time before these relatives, who were all so much older and wiser than himself, would be brought to regard him in the light of a responsible adult. Even Deborah, in her most mellow moments, treated him rather as she might be expected to treat a younger brother. She laughed at him, and teased him, and could rarely be brought to take him very seriously.
But Miss Laxton was two years younger than he, and she did not see him as a delightful boy who had not yet found his feet. To her, running away from the advances of one who seemed to her an ogre, he was a tall young knight who had stepped out from the pages of a fairy story. His knowledge of the world seemed vast to one who had none at all. He was handsome, and strong, and gentle. He instructed her ignorance, and bade her entrust her safety to him. It was not surprising that Miss Laxton should have fallen head over ears in love with him.
She was in no doubt about her feelings; it was some time before he realized the state of his own heart, and longer still before he would admit to himself that he had, incredibly, fallen out of love with one woman headlong into love with another. It seemed appalling to him that he could have done such a thing, and he was inclined to think himself the most fickle and despicable of created beings. But he knew that his love for Phoebe was quite a different emotion from his half awed adoration of Deborah. He had been swept off his feet by Deborah. She was a goddess to be worshipped, beautiful, wise, and dazzling; always immeasurably superior to himself. He did not think of Phoebe like that at all. He knew quite well that she was not as beautiful as Deborah, not wise, and appealing rather than dazzling. When Deborah had smiled at him, he had felt quite dizzy, and had had wild, romantic notions of kissing the hem of her garment, or performing impossible feats in her honour. When Phoebe smiled, no such thoughts occurred to him, but he was conscious of a strong impulse to catch her up in his arms, and hold her safe there.
He had had just such an impulse when he had said good night to her before coming down to the supper-room that evening. She had looked forlorn and defenceless, and was frightened, because she knew that Filey was in the house. He felt concerned about her, so Miss Grantham’s lack of sympathy struck him forcibly, and he came as near losing his temper with her as he had ever been in his life.
When she left the room, he joined the group round his cousin. Crewe was trying to discover what was the nature of the injury to Ravenscar’s hands, and several other persons were discussing the relative points of the two pairs of horses, and the character of the course to be covered. This had been changed from the original stretch past Epsom to a straightforward run from the village of Islington to Hatfield, on the Great North Road. Listening to the talk, Lord Mablethorpe forgot his heart’s preoccupations for a time. “I wish I were going with you!” he said wistfully. “I mean to drive out to see the finish, but that’s not the same thing.”
Ravenscar set down his empty glass on the table. “Well, you may come with me if you like,” he answered. “Only you must carry the yard of tin if you do!”
An eager flush rose to Mablethorpe’s cheeks. “Max! Do you mean it? You’ll take me in place of a groom? Oh, by Jupiter, that’s beyond anything great!”
Crewe laughed at his enthusiasm, and began to tease him.
“Why, Max, you can’t take him in place of Welling! You will be held up at every toll-bar!”
“He will not!” said Mablethorpe indignantly. “I can handle the yard of tin as well as anyone!”
“You will be so excited you will forget to blow up for the gates until it is too late.”
“I won’t! Why, I have often been with Max! I know just what to do!”
“Well,” said Crewe, shaking his head, “if you really mean to set up that great, lanky creature in Welling’s place, Max, I shall have to lay off you, and that is all there is to it.”
This shaft went home. Lord Mablethorpe’s face fell ludicrously, and he turned anxious eyes towards his cousin. “Oh Max, had I better not go with you? Am I too heavy?”
As his lordship, though tall, was boyishly slim, this apprehensive question produced a shout of laughter, which made him blush more hotly than ever. However, as he was quite accustomed to being roasted by his cousin’s friends, he took it in very good part, merely prophesying darkly the hideous fate that would one day overtake Berkeley Crewe, and announcing his intention of going home immediately, to be sure of a good night’s sleep before the race.
Mr Ravenscar thought this a wise decision, and further suggested that his lordship should refrain from informing his parent that he was to take part in the race. Lord Mablethorpe said: “Oh, by God, no! I won’t say a word to her about it!” and went off, forgetting, for the first time since he had met her, to take his leave of Miss Grantham.
Mr Ravenscar went upstairs to play faro, but if Lady Bellingham was gratified to see him at the table she managed to conceal it, looking at him with the dilating eyes of a trapped rabbit whenever he glanced in her direction, and finding it exceedingly difficult to keep her attention on the game. She had never been so glad to see a table break up and when the last of her guests had left the house she found herself without strength to climb the stairs to her bedroom, but collapsed upon a yellow satin sofa, and moaned for hartshorn.
“Be easy, ma’am!” said Lucius Kennet, who had stayed to exchange a word with Deborah. “Now, me darlin’, perhaps you’ll be telling me what game it is you’re after playing!”
Miss Grantham swung her wide skirts defiantly. “I told you what happened. It was not my fault.”
“What maggot got into your brain to give Ravenscar a candle?”
“I didn’t know what he meant to do. How should I guess?”
“What the devil should he be wanting with a candle at all, if not to be up to some mischief? Sure, it’s not like you to be gulled, Deb!”
“Well, I should not like to be left in the dark myself,” she said. “Besides, he said there were rats.”
“He was quite right,” said Lady Bellingham faintly, opening her eyes. “The servants are for ever complaining about them but what can one do?”
“Whisht, Deb! Is it the likes of Ravenscar that would afraid of a rat or two?”
“Mortimer is afraid of them,” said Lady Bellingham. “He gives me no peace about it! I am sure Ravenscar may well have been afraid of them. Oh, I shall go distract He will tell everyone what you did to him, my love, and end of it will be that no one will dare come to the house again!”
“Who bound up Ravenscar’s hands?” demanded Kennet, eyes fixed on Miss Grantham’s face. “And if he burned cord, how came his ruffles to escape? Tell me that!”
“They didn’t escape,” said Deborah crossly. “I lent him Kit’s ruffles. Where is Kit?”
Kennet grinned. “Faith, I’m thinking he didn’t care for style of things here, me darlin’, for he took himself off to supper. Don’t be trying to dodge the issue, now! It was yourself tied Ravenscar’s hands up, was it not?”
“Well, what else could I do?” she asked. “When I discovered that he was free, I was powerless to resist him. Besides, he more than half a mind to shut me up in the cellar in his place and that I could not have borne!”
“Deb, there was Silas in the hall, and meself playing I abovestairs! And what must you do but let Ravenscar out of the house without a soul to hinder him!”
“You are absurd, Lucius!” protested Miss Grantham. “Could I have a brawl in the middle of a card-party? There nothing to be done, and in any event I never meant to kid him by a hateful trick, which was what you did!”
“And what will you be doing now, me dear, if I may ask get the bills out of his hands?” asked Kennet politely.
“I don’t know, but you may be sure I shall think of so thing,” replied Deborah.
“It’s my belief,” said Kennet, “that it’s more than half in love with the man you are, Deb!”
“I?” gasped Miss Grantham. “In love with Ravenscar? Have you taken leave of your senses, Lucius? I detest him! He is most abominable, the most hateful, the most odious—oh! can you talk such nonsense? I am in no humour for it, and bid you a very good night!”
She flounced out of the room as she spoke, almost collided with her brother in the doorway. Mr Grantham seemed out of breath, and exclaimed: “Deb! I could swear I saw him, just as I was crossing Piccadilly! You let him go after all!”
“I daresay you did see him,” she answered angrily. “But I did not let him go, and I never would have let him go, and he holds a very poor opinion of you, let me tell you!”
“And what, me dear Kit, may you be knowing about the business at all?” inquired Mr Kennet, as Deborah slammed the door behind her.
“I know it all! And I will thank you, Lucius, not to encourage Deb in her wildness again! If this night’s work has not ruined all my hopes it will be no fault of yours!”
“For the love of heaven, boy, what concern is it of yours?”
“Oh, nothing!” said Kit bitterly. “Merely, that I love Ravenscar’s sister!”
Mr Kennet opened his eyes at this. “You do, do you? And what has that to say to anything?”
“How can you be such a fool? What hope have I of obtaining Ravenscar’s consent to our marriage when my sister can think of nothing better to do than to shut him up in the cellar?”
Lady Bellingham felt impelled to defend her niece, and said: “She did it for the best, Kit. She did not know that you were going to be married to Miss Ravenscar!”
Kennet glanced sideways at Kit. “Married, eh?”
“And why not?” Kit demanded. “Is it so extraordinary?”
A smile lurked about the corners of Kennet’s mouth.
“Faith, I’m thinking it would be!” he said.
“Yes! And I hold you as much to blame as Deb! More, indeed!”
“Maybe you’re right at that,” agreed Kennet, still apparently amused by some secret thought.
Lady Bellingham raised her head from the yellow cushion. “I am sure it has all been most unfortunate,” she said. “And I can’t but feel that since Deb had got Ravenscar in the cellar—not that I approve of such a thing, for I don’t, and I never shall—but since he was there, it does seem to me a pity to have let him go without getting those dreadful bills from him! Now he will start dunning me, or persecuting us in some odious way, and you know what will happen next! Deb will try to teach him another lesson, and all will end in disaster! Sometimes I think that I might be happier in a debtors’ prison!”
With these gloomy words, she withdrew to her own room, to spend a restless night dreaming of coachmakers’ bills; green peas, rats, candle-ends, and cellars teeming with bound men.
Lord Mablethorpe had had the intention, if Miss Grantham were willing, to drive her and Phoebe into the country next morning. A hurried note to Phoebe was brought round by hand at ten o’clock, explaining the sudden change in his plans, and promising to call in St James’s Square that evening to report on the result of the curricle-race. Miss Laxton gave a startled exclamation when she read this letter, and thrust it into Deborah’s hand, saying in a faint voice: “Oh, he may be killed!”
“Killed? Nonsense!” said Miss Grantham, running her eye down the paper. “I declare, I am quite tired of hearing about this race! I am sure Adrian has talked of little else for the past week. Thank heaven it will be over by tomorrow, and we need hear no more about it! As though it signified!”
“Gentlemen think so much of those things,” sighed Miss Laxton. “Oh, I hope Mr Ravenscar will beat Sir James! Adrian says there is not another whip to compare with him, but if Sir James’s horses are as good as people say—” Miss Grantham clapped her hands over her ears. “You, too!” she said reproachfully. “Not another word! For my part, I wish they might both contrive to break their necks!”
“Oh, Deb, not when Adrian will be in his cousin’s curricle!” shuddered Phoebe.
“Well, if Ravenscar is such a fine whip there can be little likelihood of any accident occurring,” said Miss Grantham.
Phoebe looked at her with wonder. “You are so brave!” she said humbly. “I wish I were, but, alas, I am not!”
“Good heavens, child, what have I to be afraid of?” asked Miss Grantham, at a loss.
“But, Deb! Adrian!”
“Oh!” said Miss Grantham, rather blankly. “To be sure, yes my dear!”
“I do not know how we are to be at ease until we know that the race is safely over,” sighed Phoebe.
“Very true,” agreed Miss Grantham, preparing to put the matter out of her mind.
She succeeded in this very well, being a good deal taken up with her own problems; but it was evident, from her restless ness, and the anxious pucker between her brows, that Miss Laxton could think of nothing else. When dusk fell and shi thought they might reasonably expect to see Lord Mablethorpe, she stationed herself in the saloon in the front of the house, and kept a watch on the darkening square through the lace curtains that shrouded the windows. Dinner was announced before that familiar figure was seen, and she was obliged to go downstairs, and to make a pretence of eating. Miss Grantham, perceiving her unrest, reminded her that the contestants would certainly dine early at Hatfield, and could not be looked for in London again for some time yet. Miss Laxton agreed to it, but felt disinclined to eat her dinner.
Mr Grantham was present, but it was seen that he was not in spirits. He appeared to be brooding over some secret trouble, and although it did not impair his appetite, it rendered him incapable of bearing more than a monosyllabic part in any conversation. He had contrived, through the connivance of Miss Ravenscar’s handmaiden (who was beginning to cherish dreams of retiring from service in the near future on the accumulated bribes she had received from her mistress’s numerous admirers), to arrange an assignation with the volatile Arabella. He had reached the rendezvous a full half hour too soon, Miss Ravenscar had joined him half-an-hour late, and with apparently no recollection of the promises of eternal fidelity exchanged a bare week before, at Tunbridge Wells. She was perfectly ready to flirt with him, hoped to meet him at the Pantheon Ball, but said that she thought, after all, that it would be stuffy to be married. Mr Grantham suspected her strongly of having transferred her affections to another, and taxed her with this treachery. Miss Ravenscar laughed mischievously, and refused to answer. Mr Grantham then put forward a very daring plan he had formed, of taking her to the masquerade at Ranleagh on the following evening. To escape from chaperonage, under pretence of going to bed with the headache, and to spend a stolen evening at a masked ball with a forbidden suitor, was just such an adventure as might have been certain of making an instant appeal to Miss Ravenscar, but, greatly to Kit’s chagrin, she cast down her eyes demurely, and said she must not think of such a thing. From the quiver at the corners of her mouth, Kit suspected that she had already thought of it, and was indeed going to the masquerade, though not in his company. It was no wonder that he should have returned to his aunt’s house in low spirits.
There was no card-party that evening. Kit went out soon after dinner, and the three ladies prepared to spend a quiet hour or two with the blinds drawn, and a snug fire burning in the Yellow Saloon. Lady Bellingham, however, soon retired to bed, complaining that the stress of the past week had quite worn her down; arid while Miss Laxton pretended to be bus with some sewing, but in reality set very few stitches, Miss Grantham flicked over the pages of a romance, and tried to hit upon an infallible plan for gaining possession of her aunt’s bills which would not entail surrendering to the enemy, but which would, on the contrary, place him in a position of the greatest discomfiture.
At ten o’clock the knock which Miss Laxton had been waiting to hear at last fell upon the front-door, and she let her needlework drop to the floor. “That must be he!”
Miss Grantham looked up. “I won’t receive him!” she said.
Phoebe stared at her in alarm. “Deb! Why, what has he done?” she faltered, turning quite pale.
“What has he done? Oh, you are talking of Mablethorpe.”
“But, dearest Deb, whom else should I be talking about asked Miss Laxton, puzzled.
Miss Grantham blushed. “I was thinking of something different,” she excused herself.
Light footsteps were heard running up the stairs; the next instant Lord Mablethorpe stood on the threshold, flushed, an a little dishevelled, and still dressed in a drab driving-coat, and topboots, both generously splashed with mud. “We won!” I announced, his eyes sparkling.
Phoebe clapped her hands. “Oh, I knew you would. I am so glad! And you are safe!”
He laughed. “Safe? Of course I am! There never was such race! It was beyond anything great! I do not know when enjoyed anything so much! Oh, Deb, do you mind me in my dirt? I thought you would not: I knew you would want hear all about it! May I come in?”
“Of course you may come in,” she said, picking up Phoebe work, and folding it neatly. “Have you dined, or would you like some supper?”
“Oh, no, thank you! We dined early in Hatfield, and I had supper with Max, at his house, just now. It was touch and go once or twice—only fancy our falling in behind an Accommodation coach on the narrow part of the road this side of Potter’s Bar! I thought all was over with us, for you must know that Filey led for the first part of the way, and was ahead of the coach. But there was never anyone like Max! You know when the road divides, at the Hadley Highstone, the Holyhead road going off to the left? Oh, I dare say you might not! But I can tell you it is as tricky a place as you may wish for, and a number of coaches and wagons on the road! Well, before I knew what he would be about, Max had dropped his hands, and let the greys shoot! It was our only chance, but there was a gig coming in from the Holyhead road, and I give you my word we cleared the Accommodation coach, with no more than a couple of inches to spare between it and the gig! I own, I shut my eyes, and said my prayers!”
“You might have been killed!” breathed Phoebe.
“So I might, with any other man holding the reins, but Max knows what his greys will do to a nicety.”
“I collect that Sir James’s pair was inferior?” said Deborah, despising herself for betraying any interest in the race.
He turned his glowing face towards her. “Oh, as to that, I would not say so by any means! It was all in the handling. When we came to Islington we found him with as bang-up a set-out of blood and bone as you could wish for: small heads, good necks, broad chests and thighs, pure Welsh bred! Beautifully matched too! But the instant Max laid eyes on them, he said to me that they were poled up too tight, and so they were. I could see Filey’s groom thought so too, but that’s Filey all over! He must always know best, and he is so cursed obstinate there’s no telling him anything! Well, there was quite a crowd gathered at the start, as you may suppose, and a good deal of betting going on. Some of the green “uns were plunging pretty heavily on Filey, because there’s no denying the bays are the showiest pair you’ll see in a twelvemonth; but the knowing ones put their money on Max, and, by Jupiter, they were right! Well, we were off to a good start, and Filey went ahead, just as Max thought he would. Max held the greys in all the way to Barnet, no more than keeping Filey in sight. I wish you might have seen Filey driving his cattle up Highgate Hill, as though it had been the last lap of the race, instead of the first! We went up behind him, just larking, you know: keeping her alive, at a gentle trot. Of course Filey did not take the hill in time, driving up it at that pace, and his near horse precious nearly stumbled as they went over the crest. When Max saw it, he said the race was our own. But that was before we got held up by that Accommodation coach! But I told you of that! We had a splendid run across Finchley Common, going good, very little traffic on the road. I would have passed Filey then, but Max said no; he would pass him in Barnet.” His lordship laughed at the memory. “In Barnet, of all places! But that is just like Max! I thought we should never be able to do it, for Barnet is always crowded. Filey can’t manage well in a street full of carts and chaises, and you could see he was fretting his cattle. They were sweating freely, and only half the course run! There was a chaise on one side of the road, and the Mail pulling out from the Red Lion, and a phaeton draw up outside some shop or other. Not enough room to allowed a cat to squeeze through, you’d have said! At all events, that what Filey must have thought, for he made no attempt to clear the chaise. Max saw his chance, and we went through, neatly as you please, at a spanking trot, threading our way. I wondered if we were going to take the phaeton’s off—wheel but we never so much as grazed it. Max has the lightest hand He says the only thing is, Filey may have ruined the bay mouths—oh, I did not tell you!—Max told Filey to name his price for his pair at the end, and has bought them. Filey was mad as fire, because of course Max’s offering to buy them showed that he thought it was Filey and not they who had lost the race. But he was so angry with them for losing that I would have sold them to the first man who offered for them. They were hanging on his hands when he brought them in Hatfield, but that was his fault. Berkeley says he always drived his worst against Max, because he is so devilish anxious to win and knows, though he won’t admit it, that Max is the better whip. We never lost the lead after Potter’s Bar.”
“You seem to have lost it after Barnet,” observed Miss Grantham dryly. “How was that?”
His lordship chuckled. “Oh, short of Hadley Green! I to Max that Filey was going to try to pass, and he said he might do so with his goodwill, for he would not spring the greys that stage. He only passed him at Barnet to fret him a trifle. There never was such a fool! Max says—”
“My dear Adrian, Max seems to have said a great deal, but wish you will try not to introduce those two words so often into your story!” said Miss Grantham blightingly.
His lordship flushed, and looked so hurt that Miss Grantham was sorry, and might have unsaid her words had she not recollected in time that it was no part of her policy to appear in an amiable light to him. She got up, saying in a cool voice: must go down to speak to Silas for a minute. Do you tell the rest of the tale to Phoebe! I am afraid I am very stupid, as I care nothing for driving, or curricle-racing, or horses. I shall come back presently, when you will be able to talk of something else, I hope!”
Lord Mablethorpe rose, and opened the door for her. When she had passed out of the-room, Phoebe said shyly: “Don’t be offended! I think she is a little worried over something. I am sure she did not mean it! She is so kind, and good!”
“I am afraid I have been very tedious,” he said. “The thing is, I found it so exciting—But it is different for you, naturally!”
“Oh no!” she said involuntarily. “I think it is the most exciting thing I ever heard! Indeed, I do! Please, please tell me the rest!”
Almost without knowing what she did, she stretched out her hand to him as she spoke. He came across the room towards her, and took her hand, and held it, looking at her with such a warm, loving expression in his eyes that her heart stood still. “Oh, Phoebe, you are so very sweet,” he said. “I do love you so dearly!”