semblance to the countenance of the astute dowager when she gave herself up to the study of her private ledger.

Even Elizabeth's fresh young voice running gaily on just behind him did not arouse him from his moody abstraction. He had been all devotion during the drive to Epsom, and Miss Luttrell's coldness and incivility, which of late had been marked, had not been sufficient to repel or discourage him. What did he care whether she was civil or uncivil? He rather liked those chilling airs, and angry flashes from brilliant eyes. They gave a charm and piquancy to her society which he had never found in the insipid amiability of other women. What did it matter how she flouted him? He meant to marry her, and she of course meant to marry him. It was not to be supposed that any woman in her right mind would refuse such an offer. And in the mean while these coldnesses, and little bitter speeches, and disdainful looks were the merest coquetries-a Benedick-and-Beatrice or Katherine-and-Petruchio kind of business. See how uncivil that fair shrew was at the outset, and how much she bore from her newly-wedded master afterwards. Lord Paulyn smiled to himself as he thought of Petruchio. I've got a trifle of that sort of stuff in me,' he said to himself complacently.

What is the matter with Lord Paulyn ?' asked Elizabeth of Mrs. Cinqmars, when they were changing horses at Mitcham, and the Viscount's gloom became, for the first time, obvious to her. She had been too busy to notice him until that moment, agreeably employed in discussing the day's racing with a couple of cavalry officers, particular friends of Mr. Cinqmars, who were delighted with the privilege of instructing her in the mysteries of the turf. She had a way of being intensely interested in whatever engaged her attention for the moment, and was as eager to hear about favourites and jockeys as if she had been the daughter of some Yorkshire squire, almost cradled in a racing stable, and swaddled in a horse-cloth.

'I'm afraid he's been losing money,' said Mrs. Cinqmars, as the Viscount descended to inspect his horses and refresh himself with brandy-and-soda. He ought to have backed the foreigner. He does look rather glum, doesn't he?'

6

'Does he mind losing a little money?' exclaimed Elizabeth incredulously.

'I don't think there are many people who like it,' answered Mrs. Cinqmars, laughing.

But he is so enormously rich, I should have thought he could hardly care about it. I know that Lady Paulyn, his mother, is very fond of money; but for a young man to care, I should have thought it impossible.'

Very low, isn't it?' said Major Bolding, one of her instructors in the science of racing; but rather a common weakness; so very human. Only it's bad form to show it, as Paulyn does.'

It's only rich people who have a genuine affection for money,' remarked Mrs. Cinqmars; a poor man never keeps a sovereign long enough to become attached to it.'

The examination of his team did not tend to improve the Viscount's temper. They had sustained various infinitesimal injuries in the journey to and from the course, so he refreshed himself by swearing a little in a subdued manner at his grooms, who had nothing to do with these damages, and then consumed his brandy-and-soda in a sullen silence, only replying to Mr. Cinqmars' lively remarks by reluctant monosyllables.

Can't you let a fellow alone when you see he's thinking?' he exclaimed at last.

'I wouldn't think too much if I were you, Paulyn,' said Mr. Cinqmars, in his genial, happy-go-lucky manner; 'I don't believe you've the kind of brain that can stand it. I've made a point of never thinking since I was five-and-twenty. I go up to the City and do my work in a couple of hours with pen, ink, and paper; all my figures before me in black-and-white, not dancing about my brain from morning till night, and from night till morning, as some men let them dance. When I've settled everything at my desk, I give my junior partner his orders; and before I've taken my hat off the peg to leave the office, I've emptied my brain of all business ideas and perplexities as clean as if I'd taken a broom and swept it.'

'All very well while you're making money,' said the Viscount, but you couldn't do that if you were losing.'

'Perhaps not. But there are men who can't make money without wearing their brains out with perpetual mental arithmetic, men who carry the last two pages of their banking-book pasted upon the inside of their heads, and are always going over the figures. Those are the men who go off their nuts by the time they're worth a million or so, and cut their throats for fear of dying in a workhouse. Come, I say, Paulyn, I know you're savage with yourself for not backing the foreigner, but you can put your money on him for the Leger, and come home that way.'

6

Very likely, when there's five to four on him!' cried the Viscount contemptuously. Then brightening a little, he inquired what was to be the order of things that night at the Rancho.

'We've a lot of people coming to dinner at nine, or so, and I suppose my wife means a dance afterwards.'

'Like Cremorne,' said Lord Paulyn. Mind your wife makes Miss Luttrell stay.'

'O, of course; we couldn't afford to lose the star of the evening. A fine girl, isn't she?' added Mr. Cinqmars, glancing critically upwards at the figure in the front seat of the drag.

A fine girl!' echoed the Viscount contemptuously; 'she's the handsomest woman I ever set eyes on, bar none.'

Lord Paulyn improved considerably after this, and when he went back to the box-seat took care that Major Bolding had no farther opportunity of demonstrating his familiarity with the arcana of the turf. He engaged the whole of Elizabeth's attention, and was not to be rebuffed by her coldness, and took upon himself the manner of an acknowledged lover; a manner which was not a little embarrassing to the plighted wife of Malcolm Forde.

'I must make an end of it as soon as possible,' she thought. I don't know that to-day's amusement has been worth the penalty I have to pay for it.'

The drag was crossing Clapham-common, an admiring crowd gazing upward at the patrician vehicle as it towered above wagonettes, barouches, landaus, hansoms, and costermongers' trucks, when Elizabeth gave a little start of surprise at recognising a face that belonged to Hawleigh. It was only the rubicund visage of a Hawleigh farmer, a man who had a family pew at St. Clement's, and who dutifully attended the two services every Sunday, with an applecheeked wife and a brood of children. He was one of a very hilarious party in a wagonette, a party of stout middle-aged persons of the publican order, who were smoking vehemently, and had wooden dolls stuck in their hatbands. She saw him look up and recognise her with ineffable surprise, and immediately communicate the fact of her presence to his companions, whereat there was a general upward gaze of admiring eyes, more or less hazy with dubious champagne.

'What's the matter?' asked Lord Paulyn, perceiving that slight movement of surprise.

'Nothing. I saw a person I know in a wagonette; only Mr. Treby, a farmer who goes to papa's church; but I was surprised at seeing him here.'

'Not very astonishing; the Derby is a grand festival for provincials; and we are such an unenlightened set in the West, we have no great races. For a Yorkshireman, now, there is nothing to see in the South. His own racecourses are as fine as anything we can show him here.'

Elizabeth was silent. She was thinking how Mr. Treby would go back and tell the little world of Hawleigh how he had seen her perched high up on a gaudy yellow-bodied coach, one of two women among a party of a dozen men, dominating that noisy dissipatedlooking crowd, with a pink parasol between her and the low sunlight; and she was thinking that the picture would hardly seem a pleasing vision to the eyes of Malcolm Forde. She had meant of course to tell him of her day at Epsom, but then the same things might seem very different described by herself and by Mr. Treby. She tried to take comfort from the thought that, after all, Mr. Treby might say very little about the encounter, and that the little he did say might

not happen to reach Malcolm's ears. Malcolm! dear name! Only to breathe it softly to herself was like the utterance of some soothing spell.

After that glimpse of Mr. Treby's rubicund visage in the wagonette her spirits flagged a little. She was glad when the drag crossed Putney-bridge. How brightly ran the river under the western sun! How gay the steep old-fashioned street, with its flags and open windows and noisy taverns and lounging boating-men! The scene had a garish tawdry look, somehow, and her head ached to desperation. She was very glad when they drove into the cool shades of the Rancho.

'O yes, thanks; I've had a most delightful day,' she said, in reply to Mrs. Cinqmars' inquiry as to her enjoyment of the great festival; but the noise and the sunshine have given me a headache, and I think, if you would let me go home at once, it would be best for me.'

'Go home! nonsense, my dear! Your aunt is to dine with us, and take you back after our little dance. It's only half-past seven. You shall have a cup of green tea, and then lie down and rest for an hour, and you'll be as fresh as a rose by nine o'clock. Turner, take Miss Luttrell to the blue room, and make her comfortable.'

This to a smartly-dressed maid, who had come to take the ladies' cloaks and parasols.

Elizabeth gave a little sigh of resignation. If it were possible to grow sick to death of this bright new world all in a moment, such a sickness seemed to have come upon her. But from the maelstrom of pleasure, be it only the feeblest provincial whirlpool, swift and sudden extrication is apt to be difficult.

'I will stop, if you wish,' she said; but my head is really very bad.' In spite of her headache, however, Miss Luttrell appeared at the banquet-which was delayed by tardy arrivals till about a quarter to ten-brightest amongst the brilliant. Mrs. Chevenix was there in her glory, on the right hand of Mr. Cinqmars, and was fain to confess to herself that the society which these people contrived to get about them was by no means despicable-a little fast, undoubtedly, and with the masculine element predominating somewhat obviously; but it was pleasant, when venturing out of one's own strictly correct circle, to find oneself among so many people with handles to their names. Lord Paulyn had by this time entirely recovered his equanimity, and had contrived to take Elizabeth in to dinner-a somewhat noisy feast, at which everybody talked of the event of the day, as if it were the beginning, middle, and end of the great scheme of creation. The wide windows were all open to the spring night; hanging moderator lamps shed their subdued light upon a vast oval table, which was like a dwarf forest of palms and ferns, stephanotis and scarlet geranium. It was quite as good as dining out-of-doors, without the inconveniences attendant upon the actual thing.

A little after eleven o'clock there came a crash of opening chords from a piano, cornet, and violin, artfully hidden in a small room off the drawing-room, and then the low entrancing melody of a waltz by Strauss. The ladies rose at the sound, and the greater number of the gentlemen left the dining-room with them.

'We can leave those fellows drinking curaçoa and squabbling about the odds for the Oaks,' said Major Bolding. 'We don't want

them.'

This was an undeniable fact, for the danseuses were much in the minority. There were a sprinkling of wives of authors and actors; a few dearest friends of Mrs. Cinqmars, who seemed to stand more or less alone in the world, and to be free-lances in the way of flirtation; a young lady with long raven ringlets and a sentimental air, who was said to be something very great in the musical line, but was rarely allowed to exhibit her talents; a stout literary widow, who founded all her fashionable novels on the society at the Rancho; and a popular actress, who could sometimes be persuaded to gratify her friends with the Charge of the Six Hundred,' or the famous scene between Mr. Pickwick and the Bath magistrate.

Elizabeth found herself assailed by a herd of eager supplicants, who entreated for round dances. No one ever suggested quadrilles at the Rancho, nor were these unceremonious assemblies fettered by the iron bondage of a programme.

'Remember,' said Lord Paulyn, 'you've promised me three

waltzes.'

'If I dance at all; but I don't think I shall.'

'Neither shall I, then,' answered the Viscount coolly. À d'autres, gentlemen, Miss Luttrell doesn't dance to-night.'

'I'd rather take a refusal from the lady's own lips, if it's all the same to you, Paulyn,' said Major Bolding.

The dust and heat have given me an excruciating headache, and I really do not feel equal to waltzing,' answered Elizabeth.

'Shall I get them to play a quadrille ?'

'No, thanks. I'm hardly equal to that, either; and I know Mrs. Cinqmars hates square dances.'

'Never mind Mrs. Cinqmars. Half a loaf is better than no bread. If you'll dance the first set, the Lancers-anything- Shall I tell the fellow to play the Grande Duchesse or la Belle Hélène ?'

'Please don't. But if you'll take me for a turn by the river, I should be glad. Will you come, auntie? I don't suppose these rooms really are hot; but in spite of all those open windows, they seem stifling to me.'

Lord Paulyn's countenance was obscured by a scowl at this proposition, and Mrs. Chevenix was quick to perceive the cloud. What could Elizabeth mean by such incorrigible fatuity? Was it not bad enough to have a country curate in the background, without intro