ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE Curzon Street was the dowry that the third Marquess of Longlan provided for his daughter, Lady Caroline Lacey, on her marriage in 1818 with Viscount Clare, the only son of the second Earl of Clarehaven. It was a double-fronted Georgian house with a delicate fanlight over the door, from which a fan-shaped flight of steps guarded by a pair of tall iron flambeau-stands led down to the pavement. That famous old beau, the first marquess, had given an eye to the architecture, and, being himself a man of fine proportions, had seen to it that the rooms of his new house would set off his figure to advantage. Solid without being stolid, dignified but never pompous, graceful but nowhere flimsy, and for everybody except the servants, who lived like corpses in a crypt, convenient—the town residence of Lord Clarehaven was as desirable as those desirable young men of Assyria upon whom in their blue clothes Aholah doted not less promiscuously than house-agents have doted upon a good biblical word.

When the second earl took charge of his wife's dowry, the fashions of the Regency were in the meridian, and the house was decorated and furnished to suit the prevailing mode. Apart from the verse of the period, there have been few manifestations of art and craft more detestable either for beauty or for comfort than those of the Regency. Great bellying lumps of furniture as fat and foul as the First Gentleman himself, and with as much superfluity of ornament as the First Gentleman's own clothes, were introduced into 129 Curzon Street to spoil the fine severity of the Georgian structure. Ugly furniture was added by the third earl, whose taste—he was a vice-chamberlain of the royal household in the 'fifties—was affected by his position as a mind is affected by misfortune. The dowager during the esthetic ardors that glowed upon the first years of her married life hung a few green and yellow draperies in the drawing-room, and during the early 'nineties she stocked these with woolen spiders or with butterflies of silk and velvet; in fact, when the fifth earl took over the control of his town house it was filled from the cellars to the attics with the accumulated abominations of eighty-five barbarous years. No doubt he would never have noticed the ugliness of the furniture if the discomfort of it had not been so obtrusive; but when he was planning to live merrily with his bride in Curzon Street he invited Messrs. Waring & Gillow to bring the house up to date with its own period and the present, allowing them a free hand with everything except the chairs, beds, and sofas, of which it was stipulated that none was to rate form or style above comfort. On the whole the result was an improvement; and since there are always enough relays of new competitors in the race for originality, purchasers were soon found even for those triads of chairs that are still seen in mid-Victorian drawing-rooms like empty cruets upon the mantelpiece of a coffee-room, and Tony was able to get a good price for the furniture of Gillows, who were by now as thoroughly worm-eaten as their handicraft. The arrangement with the decorators being modified by Dorothy's unwillingness to live in London, he postponed the complete renovation of the house to that happy date in the future when he and she should agree that East West, town's best.

Now at Clare, when Dorothy was lying in bed, careless of everything, Tony invited her to choose patterns from the books of wall-papers and chintzes sent down by Messrs. Waring & Gillow. Finding his wife in no mood to choose anything, he decided to gratify as well as he was able the taste she had expressed five or six years ago in the Halfmoon Street flat. The result was a series of what are called "chaste color schemes," which after being debauched by numerous chairs upholstered in glossy scarlet leather became positively meretricious under the temptation of silver-cased blotters and almanacs; four months after Dorothy's confinement the transformation of 129 Curzon Street into the dream of a Vanity girl was complete. She was still in too listless a mood to do anything except give a tired assent to whatever her husband proposed; physically and emotionally she was worn out, and when a second agricultural fÊte and flower-show was billed for August 25, 1908, she scarcely had the heart to present in person the silver cup and five pounds for the best flowers grown from the seeds she had supplied with such enthusiasm. Every adjunct of the show accentuated her own failure; from the women with their new babies to the chickens and the parsnips, everything seemed a rebuke to her own sterility.

Dorothy's pride might often degenerate into mere self-confidence, but it had hitherto been her mainstay in life; her failure to produce that son had sapped the foundations of pride by destroying self-confidence; her dignity as Tony's wife had been assailed, and she began to fret about the shallowness of her feeling for her husband. She would have been able to support a blow that fell with equal heaviness upon both, because she would have rejoiced in proving to Tony that she was more courageous than he; but he, from want of imagination, had let her feel that she had made a fuss about nothing; his attitude had been such, indeed, that in resuming relations with him she could not dispel the morbid fancy that she was behaving like his kept mistress. Once, in her determination to define their respective views of marriage, she asked him how he could bear to make love to a woman who was apparently so cold; in his answer he implied that her coldness was rather attractive than otherwise.

"But if you thought I really hated you to come near me?" she pressed.

"You don't really," he replied, and she turned away with a sigh of exasperation at the astonishing lack of sensitiveness in the male.

"You're nervy and strung up just at present," he went on. "And perhaps it has been bad for you to have so much of me all the time. But when you go back to town and find that you're envied by other women...."

"Because I'm married to you?" she interrupted, sharply.

"No, no, Doodles, I'm not so conceited as all that. Envied because you will be the loveliest of them all. But other men will envy me because I've got you for a wife. I don't think you realize how lovely you are."

She did realize it perfectly; but she resented a compliment that was inspired by self-satisfaction.

"The pleasure in being married to me, then," she challenged, "is that you're keeping me from other men? You wouldn't mind if I told you that I hated you, that I only married you to have rank and money, that I hooked you in the way an angler hooks a fat trout?"

"I was quite content to be hooked," said Tony.

"If I were unfaithful to you?"

His eyes hardened for a moment, like those of a groom who is being defied by a jibbing horse.

"Try it, old thing," he advised, and the whistle that lisped gently between his set teeth made expressive the quick breaths of rage that such a question evoked.

It was the day after the flower-show; they were sitting on the curved seat at the end of the pergola. Dorothy's question had an effect upon the conversation as if a painter had begged them to sustain a certain attitude until he could perpetuate it by his art; the stillness of deep summer undisturbed by a bird's note or by a whisper of a falling leaf was like thick green paint from which their forms, hastily sketched in, faintly emerged. Tony's whistle had ceased and he was stroking his mustache as if the action could help him to realize that he was alive. There seemed no reason why they should not sit there forever, like the statues all round, or the ladies and lovers in a picture by Mr. Marcus Stone. It was Tony who broke the spell by getting up and announcing business with somebody somewhere.

Dorothy, left alone on the seat, watched his form recede along the pergola, and asked herself in perplexity what she wanted as a substitute for that well-groomed, easy, and assured piece of manhood. If she was trying to tell herself that she pined to love a man without thought of children or considerations of rank and fortune, she could always elope with the first philanderer that presented himself. But she could not imagine any man for whose sake she would sacrifice as much. To be sure, she was not yet twenty-five; there lay before her many long years, one of which a grand passion might shorten to an hour. But could she ever fall in love? It was not merely because she was hard and ambitious that she was not in love with Tony and that she could not imagine herself in love with anybody else. In all her life no man had presented himself whom she could imagine in the occupation of anything like the half of one's personality that being in love would imply. Indeed, if she looked back upon the men she had known, she liked Tony best personally, apart from the material advantages that being married to him offered. Perhaps the mood she was in was nothing more than a morbid fastidiousness caused by physical exhaustion; perhaps by going up to town and leading another sort of life she should be able to view marriage more naturally. She had always criticized other women for the ease with which they fell into a habit of indulging themselves with the traditional prerogatives of their sex. Her own path had always lain so obviously in front of her nose that she had been impatient of the incommunicable aspirations expressed by other women with sighs and yearning glances; to her such women had always appeared like the tiresome people who are proud of not possessing what they would call "the bump of locality." Such dubious and apprehensive temperaments had always irritated her; madness itself was for Dorothy the result of a carefully cultivated hysteria; even illness had always seemed to her only a fraudulent method of securing attention. Was she now to array herself in the trappings of conventional femininity? She bent her mind—and it was not a pliable mind—as straight as she was able, and told herself that even if she failed ultimately to produce an heir no one could question her fitness and willingness to produce an heir. Anything that went wrong in the marriage would not be her fault. As a wife she had justified herself; and if motherhood was to be denied her—oh well, what did all this matter? She was too much exhausted to keep her mind straight, and at the first relaxation of her will it jumped away from her control like the mainspring of a watch, the quivering coils of which, though they were all of a piece, were impossible to trace consecutively to their beginning or end. The monotonous green of late summer depressed her wherever she looked; earth was hot and tired, as hot and tired as one of the women at the show yesterday. Life was not much more varied than a big turnip-field in which two or three coveys of birds were put up, some to be killed, some to be wounded, some to whir away into turnip-fields beyond.

"Which means that I'm still thoroughly exhausted," Dorothy murmured. "But I can't think of the past because he is there, and the future seems dreary because he will never be there."

When at the beginning of October the moment came to drive up to London, the problems of birth and death, of love and happiness, were overshadowed by the refusal of the car to go even as far as Exeter.

"We really must get a Lee-Lonsdale," said Tony. He made this announcement in the same tone, Dorothy reflected bitterly, as he had announced that they would have another baby.

When the butler opened the door of 129 Curzon Street, the house was full of birds' singing.

"Canaries, don't you know, and all that," Tony explained. "I thought you'd like to be reminded of the country."

Dorothy looked at him sharply to see if he was teasing her, but he was serious enough, and for the first time since that night in June when her son was born dead she was able to feel an affection for him so personal and so intimate that if they had been alone at the moment she might have flung herself into his arms. He had taken a box for the theater that night and was most eager for her to dine out with him, but she was much tired after the journey and excused herself. Since he was evidently dismayed by the prospect of an unemployed evening, she begged him to go without her, which after a short and not very stoutly contested argument he agreed to do.

Dorothy went up early to her bedroom, where for a long while she sat at the open window, listening to the traffic. How often she had sat thus at the window of her bedroom in Halfmoon Street and what promises of grandeur had then seemed implicit in the majestic sound. Only three years ago she had still been in Halfmoon Street; she could actually remember one October night like this, an October night when the still warm body of a dead summer was being pricked by wintry spears. On such a night as this Olive had called to her not to take cold, had warned her that it was bad for her voice to sit at an open window. She had been thinking about herself in Debrett and planning to be a marchioness; it was Olive's interruption which had brought home sharply to her the necessity of cutting herself off forever from the theater if she married Clarehaven. Yes, it had been a night just like this, and that other window was not five minutes away from where she was sitting now.

A taxi humming round a distant corner reminded Dorothy of an evening on the lawns at Clare when Doctor Lane had lectured her on the habits of night-jars.

"Country sights and country sounds," she exclaimed, and she shivered in a revulsion against them all, because, though she had proved her ability to share in that country life, the blind overseer Fate had withdrawn her to another environment and the overseer must always be propitiated.

The sound of the traffic was casting a spell upon Dorothy's tired nerves; she began to take pleasure in it, welcoming it as a sound familiar and cherished over many years. She looked back at herself a year ago sitting in Clarehaven church, with almost a blush for the affectation of it all, or rather for what must have seemed like affectation to other people. She had allowed herself to exaggerate everything, to dream sublimely and wake ridiculously, to be more than she was ever meant to be. Not music of wind and sea, but this dull music of London traffic was the fit accompaniment for her. She knew that now, when her own sighs absorbed in the countless sighs of the millions round her took their place in the great harmony of human sorrow. Above the castanets of hansoms and the horns of motors the omnibuses rolled like drums ... the hansoms were going back, back, the motors were going forward; but the omnibuses were going home, home, home. And was not her own journey through life like journeys she had taken as a child when the omnibus after a glittering evening went home, rumbling and rolling home?

Dorothy had nearly fallen asleep; waking to full consciousness with a start, she laughed at her fancies; quickly shutting the window, she drew the curtains and walked about the golden bedroom as if she would assure herself that the evening was not nearly spent yet, that not for her was some dim omnibus waiting to carry her home ... home. She checked the fresh impulse to dwell upon the monotonous rumble of the traffic and drove the sound from her mind. Of what could she complain, really? What other girl like herself would not envy her good fortune? What other girl would not laugh at her for thinking that life was dull because she had failed at the first attempt to produce a son? In this comfortable bedroom, amid flowers of chintz, was she not already more at home than she had ever been along the herbaceous borders of Clare? The fact was that her life at Clare had been a part sustained with infinite verve and accomplishment through many months, but always a part. Yes, it had been a part which she had sustained so brilliantly that she had nearly ruined the well-mounted but not very brilliant play in which she had been performing. The dowager had been right when she had expressed her fears for the effect upon Tony of his wife's behavior. She had considered her warning as kindly, but quite unnecessary; she had even pitied the poor little beaver-like dowager for likening her own position with that rake of a husband to that which Dorothy occupied in respect of the son. But the dowager had been right. Herself had risked the substance for the shadow, and in her lust for personal success she might abruptly have found that the play had stopped running. Luckily, it was not too late to remedy the mistake. Here was the scene set for a new act in which Tony must be allowed his chance. Poor old boy, he was not asking for much, and he was still so dependent upon her that it would be a pleasure to spoil him a little now. Should she not really be flattered that he loved her more than an heir to his name, his rank, and his fortune? What would it signify if the house of Clare became extinct? Would those ladies in the long gallery, those ladies simpering eternally at sea and sky, be a whit less immobile if children laughed on the lawns below? Would they blink their eyes or move a muscle of their rosy lips? Not they. And if strangers held their beauty in captivity, would they care? Not they. And if the earth fell into the sun so that nothing of poor mortality, not even Shakespeare, endured, would they simper less serenely in the moment before their painted lips blistered and were consumed? Not a whit less serenely. None of the people on other planets would care if the fifth Earl of Clarehaven was the last; even if the people of Mars had a telescope big enough to see what was happening on earth, they would only watch us with less compassion than we watch ants on a burning log.

"And if by chance they have got such a telescope," Dorothy murmured, "how absurd we must look."

Earth shrank to nothing even as she spoke, for on that thought she fell asleep where she was sitting and did not wake until Tony came back.

"Hullo, Doodles! Why do you go to sleep in your chair?" he asked.

"Did you enjoy the theater?"

"Well, as a matter of fact," he admitted, "I didn't use the box. I thought, as you wouldn't come, I'd drop in and have a look at the new show at the Vanity. Pretty good, really. Your friend Olive Fanshawe was in a quintet. She has a few lines to speak, too, and looks very jolly. I wish you'd come with me one night. I think you'd enjoy it."

"I will if you like," said Dorothy.

"No, really?" he exclaimed, his eyes lighting up. "Now, isn't that splendid! I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll have a party for my birthday next week. Dine at the Carlton. Two boxes at the Vanity, and supper afterward at the Savoy. I say I shall enjoy it, Doodles!"

"How old will you be?" she asked, with a smile.

"Twenty-six. Aging fast. Have to hurry up and enjoy ourselves while we can."

"I shall be twenty-five in March," she said.

Then suddenly she seemed able to throw off all her fatigue and to forget all her disappointment.

"Sorry I've been so dull these last few weeks," she murmured. "Tony, do you still love me?"

"You never need ask me that," he said. "But do you love me?"

She nodded.

"Couldn't you say it? You never have, you know. Couldn't you just whisper 'yes'?"

"Yes."

"Cleared it," he shouted, and while he was in his dressing-room she heard him singing:

This outburst was followed by a silence which was presently broken by a sound of torn paper.

"What are you tearing up, Tony?"

"Oh, nothing," he called back, in accents of elaborate indifference. "Only an old program."

In the morning Dorothy looked in the paper-basket, the bottom of which was lightly powdered by the fragments of a letter. She stooped to pick up the pieces; then she stopped.

"What does it matter who it was for? It was never sent. But I was only just in time."

On October 15th a party of eight visited "The Belle of Belgravia" at the Vanity. Besides Tony and Dorothy, there were Arthur Lonsdale, who had long forgotten all about Queenie Molyneux and could now watch a musical comedy as coldly as a dramatic critic whose paper did not depend on the theatrical advertisements. He brought his partner, Adrian Lee, whose pretty little wife, all cheeks and hair, looked much more like an actress than Dorothy, though she was really the daughter of a bishop. People used to wonder how a bishop came to have such a daughter; they forgot that while he was a vicar he had written a commentary on the Song of Solomon, with foot-notes as luscious as the plums that sink to the bottom of a cake. Harry Tufton came, and a Mrs. Foster-ffrench who went everywhere except where she most wanted to go and was always a little resentful that even with her two "f's" she could not hook herself up to some altitudes. However, that was Mrs. Foster-ffrench's private sorrow, and she did not let it mar a jolly evening. The other guests were Capt. Archibald Keith, late of the 16th Hussars, who had abandoned the cavalry in order to write the librettos of musical comedies, and a Mrs. Mainwaring, who kept a fashionable hat-shop in Bruton Street and was the widow of poor Dick Mainwaring, a brother of Lord Hughenden. Everybody always spoke about him as poor Dick Mainwaring, but whether because he had been killed at Paardeburg or because he had married Rita Daubeny was uncertain; it probably varied with the point of view of the speaker. The friends of Mrs. Mainwaring put down any oddness in her behavior to French creole blood and a childhood in Martinique; to the former was also attributable her chic in hats; to the latter the dryness and pallor of her complexion; French blood or French brandy, Martinique or Martell, the Hon. Mrs. Richard Mainwaring certainly did stimulate conversation just as paprika stimulates the appetite. But however jocund her life, her hats were chaste, and however sharp her play, her name was honorable. Moreover, so many people owed her money that they had to be pleasant to her. Mrs. Foster-ffrench, in spite of her name, had no French blood to excuse her odd behavior; in fact, she had nothing except a hyphen and those two "f's." Mr. Foster-ffrench was a younger son who, having failed to grow sisal profitably in the Bahamas, was now experimenting in Mozambique with the jikungo or Inhambane nut, and liable at any moment to experiment with vanila in Tahiti or pearls on the Great Barrier Reef; the only experiment he was never likely to make was going back to Mrs. Foster-ffrench. Dorothy wondered what Tony found to attract him in such a gathering; yet he was in tremendous spirits, obviously delighted that Archie Keith should have met the Vanity comedian that afternoon and warned him who would be in front. He was proud that all the girls on the stage kept their eyes on Dorothy throughout the evening, proud that the comedian inserted two special gags for the benefit of the jolly party, which were rewarded by a loud burst of laughter; and when the alarmed audience trained their opera-glasses upon the boxes as a beleagured garrison might train their guns upon the wild yell of savages he was radiant. After the performance they sat round a large circular table in the Savoy, and when the orchestra played "Dolly and her Collie" there was so much applause from the tables all round that Dorothy could not help feeling rather proud of the pleasure her return to town had given and was touched to think that her memory was still green. The evening wound up at the Lees' flat in Berkeley Street, when Adrian Lee and Clarehaven hospitably lost a good deal of money to their guests in the course of three hours' baccarat.

Now that Dorothy had broken her rule and had visited the Vanity for the first time since she had left the boards, she felt that she could not maintain her policy of isolation any longer; she told Clarehaven as much when they were strolling back down Curzon Street and breathing in the air of night after those feverish rooms.

"Doodles, my dear thing, I'm delighted! I never wanted you to give up any of your old friends. It was you who insisted on cutting them out like that."

"And if," she went on, "we can sit in a box with Rita Mainwaring, I don't think I can keep up this pretense of not being able to meet Olive."

"I quite agree with you. I should love to meet Olive again."

"Then what about asking her to lunch?" Dorothy suggested.

"The sooner the better," he assented, enthusiastically.

A note was sent round to the Vanity, in which Dorothy, without making the least allusion to anything that had happened in the past, most cordially invited Olive to lunch with them two days later. Olive replied, thanking Dorothy for the invitation, but mentioned that she was now living with Sylvia Scarlett, and, since she did not like to go without her and since she knew Dorothy and Sylvia were no longer on good terms, was afraid she must decline lunch, though she promised to come and see her old friend some afternoon.

"Living with Sylvia Scarlett, eh?" commented Tony, with raised eyebrows.

They were sitting in the smoking-room, where in the silence that ensued the red arm-chairs seemed to be commenting upon this problem raised so suddenly, seemed, like wise and rubicund ministers of state, to be bringing their minds to bear silently upon things in general. "Sylvia Scarlett!" Dorothy kept saying to herself, while the scarlet leather answered her. She was perplexed. For one reason she should like to meet Sylvia again, because she felt that better, perhaps, than anybody Sylvia would appreciate her point of view. Could she but bring herself to be frank with Sylvia, she could think of no one who would respond with a more intelligent sympathy to the tale of her disappointment. Moreover, if she showed the least disinclination to exclude Sylvia she might give Tony the impression that she was still resenting that week-end at Brighton, a notion which her pride was not sufficiently subdued to contemplate with equanimity. Yet to make friends again with Sylvia openly would be to penetrate rather more deeply into the hinterland of the bohemian seacoast than she had intended, even after going to the Vanity with Mrs. Mainwaring and Mrs. Foster-ffrench.

"I suppose you wouldn't care to have Sylvia here," Tony said at last; "though of course...."

Dorothy interrupted him sharply. "Why not?" she asked. "Why should I object to have Sylvia here any more than I should object to being seen at the theater with Rita Mainwaring?"

"I thought that perhaps...." he began again.

She told him to ring for a messenger-boy and immediately wrote to invite Sylvia to lunch as well.

It was difficult, considering the circumstances in which Dorothy had parted from Sylvia and Olive, for any of the girls to avoid a feeling of constraint when they met again; Dorothy, for her part, had to make a great effort not to let her nervousness give an impression that she was being reserved with her old friends. Lonsdale, however, who had fortunately been invited, was very talkative, and Tony was in boisterous spirits, so boisterous, indeed, that once or twice Dorothy looked at him in surprise. When he returned her glance defiantly she wondered if she had not made a mistake in her policy; if before consenting to come down to her husband's level she had properly safeguarded herself. No doubt in spite of her disapproval he would have gambled and drunk and made an ass of himself with the Mainwarings and the Foster-ffrenches, but by withholding herself she would have retained, at any rate, as much power over him as would have kept him outwardly deferential to his wife. Now he was no longer afraid of her.

Dorothy was roused from her abstraction by hearing herself addressed as Cousin Dorothy by Lonsdale. He was in a corner with Sylvia, and they were amusing themselves, presumably at her expense; Dorothy darted an angry look at Sylvia, who shook her head with so mocking a disclaimer that Dorothy gave up the notion of confiding in her old friend. Sylvia evidently still regarded her with hostility and contempt, and was as ready to pour ridicule upon her now as she used to be in the dressing-room on tour. On tour! The days on tour crowded upon her memory. From the corner where Sylvia and Lonsdale were chatting she heard Lily's name mentioned. What was that? Lily had married a croupier in Rio de Janeiro? But how unimportant it was who married what in this world. After so short a time, life lost its tender hues of sunrise or sunset and became garish or dim. On tour! The funny old life trickled confusedly past her vision like a runaway film, and she took Olive's hand affectionately. Olive was as sympathetic as if she had never been treated so heartlessly that day in Brighton, as eager to hear that Dorothy was happy, as eager to accept her assurances that she was. Tears stood in her eyes when she was told about the baby; but somehow her sympathy was not enough for Dorothy, who only awarded her a half-hearted sort of confidence that was sentimentalized to suit the listener. If she could have confided in Sylvia she would have told the story without sparing herself, but Sylvia had snubbed her; and, anyway, the past was not to be recaptured by talking about it.

Notwithstanding Sylvia's indifference, Dorothy went out of her way to invite her often to Curzon Street that autumn and early winter. She was fascinated by her play at baccarat and chemin de fer; she wondered upon what mysterious capital she was drawing, for, though her name was not coupled with any man who would pay her debts, she was apparently able to lose as much money as she chose. It seemed impossible that it should be her own money; but so many things about Sylvia seemed impossible. In January Olive showed symptoms of a tendency to consumption; Sylvia, without waiting an instant to win back any of her losses, took her off to Italy for a long rest.

"I despise Tony, and she despises me," Dorothy thought. "But isn't she right?"

She looked round her at the drawing-room of 129 Curzon Street, where in a foliage of tobacco smoke the faces of the gamblers stared out like fruit, and upon the green tablecloth the cards lay like fallen petals. Was not Sylvia right to despise her for encouraging Mrs. Mainwaring and Captain Keith and Mrs. Foster-ffrench and half a dozen others like them? Was not Sylvia right to despise her for setting out as a countess so haughtily and coming down to this? How she must have laughed when Olive told her about the parting in Brighton, and how little she would believe her tales of rural triumphs like the meet at Five Tree Farm. Sylvia probably considered that she had found her true level in seeing that her gambling guests were kept well supplied with refreshments.

In March even Clarehaven grew tired of baccarat with Captain Keith and the rest of them, and one morning a big new six-cylinder Lee-Lonsdale was driven up to 129 Curzon Street by the junior member of the firm, who wanted to advertise his wares on the Continent. Clarehaven's man and Dorothy's maid took the heavy luggage by train; the car with Dorothy, Lonsdale, Clarehaven, and a chauffeur swept like an arpeggio the road from London to Dover, transhipped to Calais, and made a touring-car record from Paris to Monte Carlo, whence Lonsdale, after booking some orders, returned to England without it. Tony lost five thousand pounds at roulette, a small portion of which he recovered over pigeons. He would probably have lost much more had not Dorothy told him, on a rose-hung night of stars and lamplight, that she was going to have another baby and that she must go back to Clare.

The prospective father was so pleased with the news that he set out to beat the record established by Lonsdale on the way down, drove into a poplar-tree, and smashed the car. Dorothy had a miscarriage and lay ill for a month at a small village between Grenoble and Lyons. Tony was penitent; but he was obviously bored by having to spend this idle month in France, and as soon as Dorothy was well enough to travel and he had assured himself that she was not nervous after the accident, he drove northward faster than ever. They reached Clare at the end of May.

II

The bluebells were out when Dorothy came home, their pervasive sweetness sharpened by the pungency of young bracken; even as sometimes the heavenly clouds imitate the hills and valleys of earth or lie about at sunset like islands in a luminous and windless ocean, so now earth imitated heaven, and the bluebells lay along the woodland like drifts of sky. May was not gone when Dorothy came back; the cuckoo was not even yet much out of tune; the fallow deer did not yet display all their snowy summer freckles; the whitethroat still sang to his lady sitting close in the nettles by the orchard's edge; apple-blossom was still strewn upon the lengthening grass; the orange-tip still danced along the glades; the red and white candles upon the horse-chestnuts were not yet burned out. It was still May; but June like a grave young matron stood close at hand, and May like a girl grown tired of her flowers and of her finery would presently fall asleep in her arms. And like the merry month Dorothy pillowed her head upon the green lap of June. For several weeks she made no allusion to the accident on the way home from Monte Carlo; nor, beyond the perpetually manifest joy she took in the seasonable pageant, did she give any sign of her distaste for the way she and Tony had spent the past year. The problem of what was to happen next autumn was not yet ripe for discussion, and in order to enjoy fully the present peace Dorothy persuaded Clarehaven to accept an invitation to go fishing in Norway, after which he would camp with the yeomanry for three weeks; and then another year would have to be catered for so that not one minute of it should be wasted—in other words, that it should be squeezed as dry as an orange to extract from it the last drop of pleasure. Tony wanted her to come with him to Norway, but she made her health an excuse and sent him off alone.

In July the countess and the dowager were pacing the turf that ran by the edge of that famous golden border now in its prime. The rich light of the summer afternoon flattered the long line of massed hues which had been so artfully contrived. The unfamiliar beauty of the bronzed Himalayan asphodels, of citron kniphofias from Abyssinia and sulphur-lilies from the Caucasus, of ixias tawny as their own African lions, of canary-colored Mexican tigridias and primrose-hooded gladioli that bloom in the rain forest of the Victoria Falls, mingled with the familiar forms of lemon-pale hollyhocks and snapdragons, with violas apricot-stained, and with many common yellow flowers of cottage gardens to which the nurserymen had imparted a subtle and aristocratic shade.

"What a success your golden border has been," the dowager exclaimed.

Dorothy felt suddenly that she could not any longer tolerate such compliments. The life-blood of her marriage seemed to be running dry before her eyes while she was amusing herself with golden borders, and she wanted her mother-in-law to understand how critical the position was, and what disasters lurked in the future while the sun flattered the flowers, and she flattered her son's wife.

"I'm going to be very frank," Dorothy began. "I want to know more about Tony's father."

The dowager with a look of alarm leaned over the border to hide her embarrassment.

"My dear," she said, "how cleverly you've combined this little St.-John's-wort with these copper-colored rock-roses. They look delightful together."

"Why did you marry him?" Dorothy asked.

"Dorothy! Such a question, but really, I suppose—well, I don't know. I suppose really because he asked me."

"Your mother didn't insist upon it?"

"Well, of course, my mother didn't oppose it," the dowager admitted. "No, certainly not ... she didn't actually oppose it; in fact possibly ... yes ... well.... I think one might almost say that she.... Oh, aren't these trolliums gorgeous? They are trolliums, aren't they? I always get confused between trilliums and trolliums?"

"Trollius. Persuaded you into it?" Dorothy supplemented. "Did you love him?"

This was altogether too intimate an inquiry, and the dowager, failing to bury her blushes in the opulent group of butter-colored flowers that she was bending over to admire, took refuge in her bringing-up.

"We were brought up differently in those days," she said. "I don't think that men depended upon their wives to quite the same extent they do now."

"I'm asking you all this," Dorothy explained, "because as far as the future is concerned Tony and I are standing now at crossroads. If I oppose or, even without opposing them, if I fail to share in his pleasures, my attitude won't have any sobering effect. But if I take part with him willingly and enjoy what he enjoys, it may be that I shall have enough influence to prevent his going too far. Frankly, he doesn't seem to have an idea that there may be something else in life besides self-indulgence, the instant and complete self-indulgence that he always allows himself. Money and rank only exist for him because they are useful to that end. The only thing he was ever denied for five minutes of his life was myself, and after a period of active sulking he got me. I suppose you spoiled him, really."

The dowager looked melancholy.

"I'm not reproaching you," said Dorothy. "I quite understand the temptation. That's why I asked if you ever loved your husband. I thought that perhaps you didn't and that you'd had to love Tony much more in consequence. I'm sorry about that son of mine, because I should have liked to prove that it is possible to devote oneself utterly to a son without spoiling him. Meanwhile, I'm afraid it's too late to do anything with Tony. You must forgive me for this attack upon illusions. I shall never make another. I only wanted you to know, because you were kind to me when I first came here, that I've done my best and that there's nothing more to be done."

"But you're so beautiful," said the dowager. "I was never beautiful."

"Oh, so far as keeping him more or less faithful is worth while, I don't suppose I shall have the least difficulty," Dorothy admitted. "But each time I tame him with a kiss I reduce my own self-respect a little bit, and I blunt his respect for me. If I were his mistress, my kisses would be bribes to make him spend money on me; as his wife my kisses are bribes to prevent his spending money on other women. Anyway, this is the last that you or any one else shall ever hear on this rather unpleasant subject. I think these tigridias that Mr. Greenish was so keen to combine with the ixias were a mistake. They are quite faded by the afternoon."

It was now Dorothy's turn to direct the conversation toward flowers, while the dowager endeavored to keep it personal.

"I've often thought," she began, "what a pity it was for you to cut yourself off so completely from your own family."

"I certainly shouldn't find them of any help to me now," said Dorothy.

"Well, I don't know. I think that a mother can always be helpful," the dowager argued. "I think it's a pity that you should have felt the necessity of eliminating your family like this. I dare say I was to blame in the first place, and I'm afraid that I gave you the impression that we were much more snobbish down here than we really are. Your impulse was natural in the circumstances, but I had hoped that I had been able to prove to you that my opposition was only directed against your profession, and you who know what Tony is will surely appreciate my alarm at the idea of his marrying merely to gratify himself at the moment. My own dear old mother was perhaps a little more sensitive than I am to old-fashioned ideas of rank. She belonged to a period when such opinions were widely spread in the society she frequented. I confess that since she died I have found myself inclining more and more every day to what would once have been called Red Radicalism. You know, I really can't help admiring some of the things that this dreadful government is trying to do." The epithet was so persistently applied by the county that for the dowager it had lost any independent significance; it was like calling a tradesman "dear sir."

Dorothy was tempted to ask the dowager if she did believe the account she had given of her family, but she felt that if she suggested even the possibility of such skepticism she should be admitting its justification. And then suddenly she had a profound regret that her mother had never seen Clare, had never trodden this ancient turf nor sat beneath those cedar-trees. If the dowager had extended the courtesy of breeding to accept those legends her daughter-in-law had spread about herself, her courtesy would certainly not be withheld from accepting that daughter-in-law's mother. The idea took shape; it positively would be jolly to invite her mother to stay for a month at Clare. Tony would not be bored; he would be away all the time.

"And not merely your family," the dowager was saying. "Oh no, it's not merely cutting yourself from them, but also from your friends. I've heard somebody called Olive alluded to once or twice, and surely she would enjoy visiting here. Though please don't think me a foolish busybody. Perhaps Olive prefers London."

"Olive has just got married. She was married last week."

"Then I've heard you talk about a Sylvia, who possibly might care to stay down here. Dear child, don't misunderstand me, I beg. I'm only trying to suggest that you are conceivably making a mistake in dividing your life into two. After all, look at this border. See how the old-fashioned favorites of us all are improved by these rarer flowers. And do notice how well the simple flowers hold their own with those exotics that have been planted out from the greenhouse. You see what I'm trying to tell you? If Tony has certain tastes, if he likes people of whom you and I might even mildly disapprove, let him see them here in another setting. However, that you must decide later on. The only thing I should like to lay stress upon is your duty toward your family...."

"To my mother only," Dorothy interrupted. "I have no duty toward my father."

"Perhaps you will think differently when you have seen your mother. I like her so much already. How could I do otherwise when she has given me a daughter-in-law for whom I have such a great admiration?"

Dorothy took the dowager's hand and looked down earnestly and affectionately into her upturned gaze.

"Why are you always so sweet to me?" she asked.

"Whatever I am, my dear child, it is only the expression of what I feel."

That evening Dorothy wrote to her mother.

The prospect of her mother's visit was paradoxically a solace for Dorothy's disappointed maternity. The relation between them was turned upside down, and her mother became a little girl who must be looked after and kept from behaving badly, and who when she behaved well would be petted and spoiled.

Heaven knows what domestic convulsions and spiritual agitations braced Mrs. Caffyn to telegraph presently:

For a moment Dorothy thought that she was coming with Vincent, Gladys, and Marjorie, so invariably did she picture her family as all of the same age as when seven years ago she first left Lonsdale Road to go to the stage. A little consideration led her to suppose that hats not brats were intended, and she telegraphed back:

Dorothy went to meet Mrs. Caffyn at Exeter in order that the three hours in the slow train between there and Cherrington Lanes might give her an opportunity of recovering herself from that agitation which had made her telegram so ambiguous. It was impossible to avoid a certain amount of pomp at the station, because the station-master, on hearing that her ladyship was expecting her ladyship's mother, led the way to the platform where the express would arrive and unrolled before her a red carpet of good intentions.

"Stand aside there," he said, severely, to a boy with a basket of newspapers.

"First stop Plymouth," shouted the porters when the express came thundering in.

"Stand aside," thundered the station-master, more loudly; perhaps he was addressing the train this time.

Mrs. Caffyn looked out of a second-class compartment and popped in again like some shy burrowing animal that fears the great world.

"What name, my lady, would be on the luggage?" asked the station-master when, notwithstanding her emersion from a second-class compartment, he had seen Mrs. Caffyn embraced by her ladyship.

"Caffyn! Caffyn!" he bellowed. "Stand aside there, will you? Both vans are being dealt with, my lady," he informed her.

The luggage was identified; a porter was bidden to carry it to No. 5 platform; and the station-master, taking from Mrs. Caffyn a string-bag in which nothing was left except a paper bag of greengages, led the way to the slow train for Cherrington.

"I traveled second-class," Mrs. Caffyn whispered, nervously, while the station-master was stamping about in a first-class compartment, dusting the leather seats and arranging the small luggage upon the rack. "I hesitated whether I ought not to travel third, but father was very nice about it."

"Please change this ticket to first-class as far as Cherrington Lanes, Mr. Thatcher," said Dorothy.

"Immediately, my lady," he announced; and as he hurried away down the platform Mrs. Caffyn regarded him as the Widow Twankay may have regarded the Genie of the Lamp.

"I've brought five hats with me," Mrs. Caffyn announced when the slow train was on its way and Mr. Thatcher was left standing upon the platform and apparently wondering if he could not give it a push from behind as a final compliment to her ladyship. "And now—oh dear, I must remember to call you Dorothy, mustn't I? By the way, you know that Dorothy is going to have a baby in November? Her husband is so pleased about it. He's doing very well, you know. Oh yes, the Norbiton Urban District Council have intrusted him with—well, I'm afraid I've forgotten just what it is, but he's doing very well, and I thought you'd be interested to hear about Dorothy. But I really must remember not to call you Norah."

"It wouldn't very much matter, mother."

"Oh, wouldn't it?" Mrs. Caffyn exclaimed, brightening. "Well, now, I'm sure that's a great weight off my mind. All the way down I've been worrying about that. And now just tell me, because I don't want to do anything that will make you feel uncomfortable. What am I to call your sisters-in-law? I understand about your mother-in-law. She will be Lady Clarehaven. Is that right? But your sisters-in-law?"

"Bella and Connie."

"Bella and Connie?" repeated Mrs. Caffyn. "Nothing else? I see. Well, of course, in that case I don't think I shall feel at all shy."

Although Dorothy was no longer concerned whether her mother did or did not behave as if she were in the habit of visiting at great houses during the summer, she could not resist indulging her own knowledge a little, not with any idea of display, but because she enjoyed the feeling that somebody was dependent upon her superior wisdom in worldly matters. Mrs. Caffyn enjoyed her lessons, just as few women—or men, for that matter—can resist opening a book of etiquette that lies to hand. They would not buy one for themselves, because that would seem to advertise their ignorance; but if it can be read without too much publicity it will be read, for it makes the same appeal to human egoism that is made by a medical dictionary or a work on palmistry. One topic Dorothy did ask Mrs. Caffyn to avoid, which was the life of her own mother. After that conversation by the golden border she had little doubt that the dowager did not accept as genuine the tapestry she had woven of her life; but that was no reason for drawing attention to all the fabulous beasts in the background.

"Perhaps you'd better not say anything about Grandmother Doyle," Dorothy advised. "I had to give an impression that she was related to Lord Cleveden, and if you talk too much about her it would make me look rather foolish."

"But she did belong to the same family," said Mrs. Caffyn.

"Yes, but I'd rather you didn't mention it. You can talk about Roland and Cecil and Vincent, only please avoid the topic of Grandmother Doyle."

"Of course I'll avoid anything you like," Mrs. Caffyn offered. "And perhaps I'd better throw these greengages out of the window."

The dowager was much too tactful, as Dorothy had foreseen, to ask Mrs. Caffyn any questions; she, with a license to talk about her children, was never at a loss for conversation. There is no doubt that she thoroughly enjoyed herself at Clare, and with two garden hats worn alternately she sat in placid survey of her daughter's grandeur, drove with the dowager in the chaise, congratulated Mrs. Beadon and Mrs. Kingdon upon their children, patted every dog she met, and went home first-class surrounded by baskets of peaches.

Notwithstanding the dowager's advice, Dorothy sent her mother home before Tony came back, not because she was ashamed of her, but because she dreaded his geniality and cordial invitations to bring the whole family to Curzon Street. She could not bear the idea of her father's arriving at all hours, for since the revelation of his tastes that night in St. John's Wood she fancied that he would rather enjoy the excuse his son-in-law's house would offer him of forgetting that he was still secretary of the Church of England Purity Society. So long as Tony did not meet any of her family he would not bother about them; but if he did, the temptation to his uncritical hospitality would be too strong.

The partridges were very plentiful that autumn at Clare; the pheasants never gave better sport. Dorothy invited Olive and her husband, a pleasant young actor called Airdale, to visit Clare, but Olive had to decline, because she was going to have a baby. Sylvia Scarlett Dorothy did not invite; but Sylvia Lonsdale came with her brother, and late in the autumn the Clarehavens went to stay with the Clevedens in Warwickshire. Lord Cleveden talked to Tony about the need for a strong colonial policy, and Lady Cleveden talked to Dorothy about the imperative necessity of finding a wife for Arthur at once. The shooting was not so good as at Clare, and Tony decided that he required London as a tonic for the rural depopulation of his mind.

"These fellows who've been in administrative posts get too self-important," he confided to Dorothy. "Now I don't take any interest in the colonies. Except, of course, British East and the Straits. When a fellow talks to me about Queensland my mind becomes a blank. I feel as if I was being prepared for Confirmation, don't you know?"

They reached town toward the end of November, and within a week the old set was round them. Baccarat and chemin de fer, the Vanity and the Orient, smart little dances and rowdy little suppers, Mrs. Foster-ffrench and the Hon. Mrs. Richard Mainwaring, they were back in the middle of them all. Sylvia Scarlett turned up again, still apparently with plenty of money to waste on gambling. She and Dorothy drifted farther apart, if that were possible, and their coolness was added to by Sylvia's recommendation of a rising young painter called Walker for Dorothy's portrait, which Dorothy considered a failure, though when afterward she was painted by an artist who had already risen that was a failure, too. Sylvia seemed to misunderstand her wantonly; Dorothy armed herself against her old friend's contempt and tried to create an impression of complete self-sufficiency. Once in the spring an occasion presented itself for knocking down the barrier they had erected between themselves. Sylvia had just brought the sum of her losses at cards to over six hundred pounds, and Dorothy, on hearing of it, expressed her concern.

"I suppose you wonder where I find the money to lose?" Sylvia asked.

"Oh no, I wasn't thinking that. I'm not interested in your private affairs," said Dorothy, freezing at the other's aggressive tone.

"No?" said Sylvia. "You easily forget about your friends' private affairs, don't you? But I warned Olive that your chauffeur wouldn't be able to find the way to West Kensington."

"How can you...." the countess broke out. Then she stopped herself. If she tried to explain what had kept her from visiting Olive Airdale all these months, she should have to reveal her own intimate hopes, her own jealousy and disillusionment; she would prefer that Sylvia supposed it was nothing more than snobbery that kept her away from Olive. If once she began upon explanations she should have to explain why she so seldom visited or spoke of her family. She should have to admit that she could no longer answer for Tony, even so far as to be sure that he would not invite her father to sit down with him to baccarat. And even those explanations would not be enough; she should have to go back to the beginning of her married life and expose such rags and tatters of dreams. Her mind went back to that railway carriage on a wet January afternoon when "Miss Elsie of Chelsea" traveled from Manchester to Birmingham. She remembered the supper that was kept waiting for Sylvia and her cheeks all dabbled with tears and a joke she had made about trusting in God and keeping her powder dry. She had tried to win Sylvia's confidence then and she had been snubbed. Should she volunteer her own confidence now?

"I'm sorry you've lost so much money in my house," said the countess.

Then she blushed; the very pronoun seemed boastful.

"Never mind. I'm going down to Warwickshire to-morrow to help Olive bring an heir into the world."

"Does she want a girl or a boy?" Dorothy asked.

"My dear," said Sylvia, "she is so anxious not to show the least sign of favoritism even before birth that in order to achieve a perfect equipoise she'll either have to have twins or a hermaphrodite."

In April Dorothy heard that her friend actually had produced twins.

"It seems so easy," she sighed, "when one hears about other people."

"Cheer up, Doodles," said Tony. "I won four hundred last night. It's about time I got some of my own back from Archie Keith; he's been plucking us all for months, lucky devil. I shall chuck shimmy."

"I wish you would," said Dorothy.

"Solemn old Doodles," he laughed. "Harry Tufton wants me to take up racing. By Jove, I'm not sure I sha'n't. You'd like that better, wouldn't you?"

"I'd like anything better than these eternal cards," she declared, passionately.

At the same time she was a little nervous of the new project, and she took an early opportunity of speaking about it to Tufton, who addressed her with the accumulated wisdom of the several thousand hours he had spent in the Bachelors' Club.

"My dear Dorothy," he began, flashing her Christian name as his mother flashed her diamonds. "I'm very glad you've broached this subject. The fact is, Tony really must draw in a little bit. I don't know how much he's lost these last two years; but he has lost a good deal, and it certainly isn't worth while losing for the benefit of people like Archie Keith and Rita Mainwaring. Only the other day at the Bachelors' I was speaking to Hughenden, and he said to me, 'Harry, my boy, why don't you exercise your influence with Tony Clarehaven and get rid of that harpy who unfortunately has the right to call herself my sister-in-law?' Well, that was rather strong, don't you know? And your cousin Paignton spoke to me about him, told me his father was rather worried about Tony—the Chatfield push feel it's not dignified. As I said to him: 'My dear fellow, if you want to lose money, why don't you lose money in a gentlemanly way? There are always horses.'"

"But I don't want him to lose his money at all," Dorothy protested.

"Quite, quite," Mr. Tufton quacked. "But you'd prefer him to lose money over horses than present it free of income tax to Archie Keith and Rita Mainwaring? At this rate he'll soon lose all his old friends, as well as his money."

Dorothy looked at the speaker; she was wondering if this was the fidgeting of a more than usually apprehensive ship's rat.

III

The Clarehaven property outside the park itself did not now include more than three thousand acres; but some speculations in which the fourth earl indulged after selling the old Hopley estate had grown considerably in value during his son's minority; and when Tony came of age, in addition to his land, which, after the payment of the dowager's jointure and all taxes, brought him in a net income of about three thousand pounds a year, he had something like seventy thousand pounds invested in Malayan enterprises which paid 10 per cent, and brought up his net income to well over eight thousand pounds. He had already been forced to sell out a considerable sum for the benefit of Captain Keith, Mrs. Mainwaring, and the rest of them; but should he decide to start a racing-stable he would have plenty of capital left on which to draw. Dorothy protested that he ought not to look upon a racing-stable as a sound and safe investment for capital that was now producing a steady income and that, with rubber booming as it was, would probably be much augmented in the near future. Yet she was afraid to be too discouraging, for, whatever might be urged against horse-racing, it offered a more dignified activity to a gambler than baccarat.

Clarehaven began his career on the turf with a sobriety which contrasted with his extravagance at cards. He bought the stable of Mr. Tufton, senior, and, leaving it in the cautious hands of old William Cobbett at Newmarket, was content during his first season to compete in a few minor handicaps and selling-plates. Such betting as he did was, on the whole, lucky; he found himself toward the end of the season with a margin of profit; and triumphantly he announced to Dorothy that he was going to invest in some really first-class yearlings at Tattersall's and Doncaster. She did not dissuade him, because she had had a talk with honest old William Cobbett, who had assured her that his lordship was willing to listen to his advice, and that if he would be guided by him there was no reason why his lordship should not win some of the great classic races the year after next, fortune being favorable. He spoke of the black, white, and purple of Clarehaven as of colors once famous upon famous courses, and implied that Saturday afternoons at Windsor or Lingfield Park were hardly worthy of the time-honored combination. Dorothy could not help agreeing with the trainer; throughout this first season there had been a great deal too much of Captain Keith and Mrs. Foster-ffrench, too much of a theatrical garden-party about those Saturday afternoons, and although this year Tony had been lucky, another year he might be unlucky and fritter away his money and his reputation in the company of people who saw no difference between the green baize of a card-table and the green turf of a racecourse. Several people had talked of the fourth earl's great deeds upon the turf during the 'seventies; she, still susceptible to intimations of grandeur, viewed with dismay these degenerate week-ends and encouraged Tony to aim higher. If he would not speak in the House of Lords, he might at least win the Derby; and if he won the Derby, surely his lust for gambling would be satiated and he might retire to Clare to raise blood-stock. The idea of owning some mighty horse, the paragon of Ormonde or Eclipse or Flying Childers, obsessed her; she pictured ten years hence a small boy attired in Gainsborough blue, proudly mounted upon a race-horse that should be the sire and grandsire and great-grandsire of a hundred classic winners. She became poetical, so keen was her ambition, so vivid her hope; this mighty horse should be called Moonbeam, should be a ray from the full moon of Clare to illuminate them all—Anthony—herself, that son, who might almost be called Endymion. Why not? Disraeli had called one of his heroes Endymion. Affected? Yes, but Endymion Viscount Clare! Why should Endymion for a boy be more affected than Diana for a girl? And why not Diana, too? Lady Diana Clare! They might be twins. Why not? Mrs. Beadon had produced twins, Olive had produced twins. Moonshine suffused Dorothy's castle in Spain, and moonstruck she paced the battlements.

Tony bought a string of horses at Tattersall's, and at Doncaster paid £600 and £750, respectively, for two yearlings with which old William Cobbett expressed himself particularly well satisfied. It happened that year that a young Greek called Christides, who had lately come of age, won the Champagne Stakes and, in his elation, bought a yearling for three thousand guineas. It further happened that after a triumphal dinner he gave to several friends, among whom was Tony, he lost twice that sum at auction bridge. Though Mr. Christides was extremely rich, his native character asserted itself by an abrupt return to prudence. He had allowed himself a fixed sum to spend at Doncaster, and, having exceeded his calculations, he must sell the yearling—a black colt by Cyllene out of Maid of the Mist. There was no question that he was the pick of the yearlings; if old William Cobbett had not protested so firmly against the price, Clarehaven would have been tempted to buy him at the sale. Dorothy, with her mind still a tenant of Spanish castles, saw in the Maid of the Mist colt the horse of her dreams, and by letting her superstition play round the animal she became convinced that it held the fortunes of Clare. Was not the sire Cyllene, which easily became Selene—Dorothy was deep in moon-lore—and would not the offspring of Selene and Maid of the Mist be well called Moonbeam? Moreover, was not the colt black with one splash of white on the forehead? When, therefore, Mr. Christides offered the yearling to settle his losses with Tony, in other words for £2,722, Dorothy was anxious for him to accept. Old William Cobbett was frightened by the price, but he could urge nothing against the colt except, perhaps, the slightest tendency to a dipped back, so slight, however, that when Mr. Christides, still true to his native character, knocked off the odd £22, the small sum was enough to cure the slight depression.

Dorothy thoroughly enjoyed the winter that followed the purchase of the colt. As soon as Moonbeam—of course he was given the name at once—was safe in William Cobbett's stable the trainer admitted that there was not another yearling to touch him. In the two colts which he himself had advised his patron to buy he could hardly bring himself to take the least interest, and in fact both of them afterward did turn out disappointments, one bursting blood-vessels when called upon for the least effort, and the other a duck-hearted beast that for all his fine appearance never ran out a race. But Moonbeam was everything that a colt could be.

"The heart of a lion," said honest old William, "and as gentle as a dove with it all. Be gad! my lady, I believe you're a real judge of horseflesh, and damme—forgive the uncouth expression—but damme, if ever I go to another sale without you."

"But will he win the Derby?" Dorothy asked.

"Well now, come, come, come! This is early days to begin prophesying. But I wouldn't lay against him, no, begad! I wouldn't lay ten to one against him—not now I wouldn't. Dipped back? Not a bit. If ever I said his back was dipped I must have been dipped myself. You beauty! You love! You jewel!"

After which honest old William took out a bandana handkerchief as big and bright as the royal standard and blew his nose till the stable reverberated with the sound.

"See that? Not a blink," he chuckled. "Not a blink, begad! That colt, my lady, is the finest colt ever seen at Cobbett House. You bird! You gem!"

Tony himself was as enthusiastic as Dorothy or the trainer, and there was no talk of London for a long while. He rented a small hunting-lodge in the neighborhood to please Dorothy, and what between shooting over the Cambridgeshire turnips and hunting hard with two or three noted packs the winter went past quickly enough. Even better than the shooting and the hunting were the February days when Moonbeam was put into stronger work and, in the trainer's words, "ate it."

"He's a glutton for work," said honest old William.

Dorothy and he used to ride on the Heath and watch the horses at exercise, and if only Moonbeam was successful next season with his two-year-old engagements and if only he would win the Derby and if only next year she might have a son....

Moonbeam's first public appearance was at the Epsom Spring Meeting when he ran unplaced in the Westminster Plate, much to Dorothy's alarm.

"He wasn't intended to do anything," the trainer explained, soothingly. "This was just to see how he and Joe Flitten took to each other. Well, Joe, what do you think of him?"

"All right, Mr. Cobbett," said the young jockey, who was considered to be the most promising apprentice at headquarters.

The colt's next engagement was for the Woodcote Stakes at the Epsom Summer Meeting, when he was ridden by Harcourt, one of the leading jockeys of the day, and was backed to win a large sum. Something did go wrong this time, for, though he was running on strongly at the finish, he was again unplaced.

"Dash it!" Clarehaven exclaimed, ruefully. "I hope this isn't going to happen every time. You and her ladyship have made a mistake, I'm afraid, Cobbett. If you ask me, he pecked."

Honest old William looked very grave.

"If you ask me, my lord, it was his jockey. The colt was badly ridden. Still, it was a disappointment, there's no getting over it. But it's early days to begin fretting, and he was running on. No doubt about that. Tell you what, my lord, if you'll take my advice you'll give Joe Flitten the mount for Ascot, and if Joe doesn't bring out what there is in him, why then we'll have to put our heads together, that's all about it."

So Joe Flitten, the Cobbett Lodge apprentice, rode Moonbeam in the New Stakes, when the colt made most of his rivals at Epsom look like platers; although it was to be noted that Sir James Otway's unnamed colt by Desmond out of Diavola, which had won the Woodcote Stakes, did not run.

"Like common ordinary platers," honest old William avowed.

After this performance the racing-press began to pay attention to Moonbeam, and when in July he won the Hurst Park Foal Plate with ridiculous ease they admitted that his victory at Ascot was no fluke.

In August Tony rented a grouse-moor in Yorkshire. His other horses were not doing too well, but he was feeling prosperous, for Moonbeam had already repaid him several times over his losses at Epsom; and at the end of the month a jolly party drove over to York in a four-in-hand to see the colt canter away with the Gimcrack Stakes. At this meeting Dorothy really felt that Tony was what in another sense the press would have called "an ornament to the turf." There were no Mrs. Mainwarings and Captain Keiths with them at York, and she never felt less like a Vanity girl than when she heard the crowd cheering Moonbeam's victory—he was by now a popular horse—and looked round proudly at her party; at Uncle Chat with Paignton and Charlie Fanhope; at Bella and Connie, both bright red with joy; at Arthur and Sylvia Lonsdale, and at Miss Horatia Lonsdale, a delightful aunt who was helping Dorothy chaperon the girls, an easy enough task as regards Bella and Connie and not very difficult as regards her niece.

Finally in the autumn Moonbeam won the Middle Park Plate and was voted the finest two-year-old seen at Newmarket for several seasons.

"And now let him keep quiet till the Guineas," said William Cobbett, with a sigh of satisfaction.

"You wouldn't run him in the Dewhurst?"

"No, no, let him rest with what he's done."

"Cobbett is right," said Lord Stilton, one of the stewards of the Jockey Club, who came into the paddock at that moment. "You've got the Derby next year, Clarehaven, if you don't overwork him. That apprentice of yours is a treasure, Cobbett."

"A good boy, my lord."

"You don't know my wife," Tony was saying.

"My congratulations, Lady Clarehaven. I hear you picked out with my old friend William here."

Later on Dorothy was presented to Lady Stilton. She in turn presented her daughter, the beautiful and charming Lady Anne Varley, whose engagement to the young Duke of Ulster had just been announced.

"My dear Dorothy," said Harry Tufton that evening, "you must admit that my advice was good. How much better this sort of thing becomes you than ..." He waved his arms in a gesture of despair at finding any adjective sufficiently contemptuous for those evenings at Curzon Street before his lifelong friend, Tony Clarehaven, had followed his advice and sported the black, white, and purple colors so famous forty years ago.

The prospect of winning the Derby next year really did seem to have completed Tony's cure. He raised no objections when Dorothy insisted that his mother and his sisters should spend the autumn in town, and he actually went three times to the House of Lords to vote against some urgent measure of reform. He did not make a speech, but he coughed once in the middle of an oration by a newly created Radical peer, so significant and so nearly vocally expressive a cough that it deserved to be recorded in Hansard as a contribution to the debate.

Dorothy had been desirous of the dowager's help to consolidate a position in London society that now for the first time appeared tenable. Her meeting with Lady Stilton had given her a foothold on the really high cliffs, and if Tony did not spoil everything she saw no reason why she should not repeat on a larger scale in town her success in Devonshire. It was a pity that Bella and Connie were so ugly; if she could bring off brilliant matches for them, what a help that would be. Of course, it was not the season; most people were out of town notwithstanding that Parliament was sitting; but still surely somewhere in the crowded pages of Debrett could be found suitors for the hands of her sisters-in-law. The nearest approach to a match was when Lord Beccles, the lunatic heir of the Marquis of Norwich, became perfectly manageable if he was allowed to drive with Bella in Hyde Park, chaperoned by his nurse and watched by a footman who held a certificate from one of the largest private asylums in England. If Lord Beccles was a congenital idiot, there were three other sons of Lord Norwich who were sane enough, the eldest of whom, Lord Alistair Gay, agreed with Dorothy that, if Lady Arabella was willing, the marriage would be a kindness to his poor brother. Bella would not take the proposal seriously, and it was evident that she regarded her drives with the poor idiot in the light of a minor charity ranking with the care of a distempered dog or of a cottager's baby.

"You surely aren't serious, Dorothy," she laughed.

"Well, it would give you a splendid position. You would be a countess now and probably a marchioness very soon. Lady Norwich is dead. Lord Norwich is very old, and idiots often live a long time. I'm not suggesting that it would be anything more than a formal marriage, but you apparently don't mind his dribbling with excitement when he sees the Albert Memorial and.... However, I wouldn't persuade you into a match for anything. Only it doesn't seem to me that it would imply anything more than you do for him at present."

The dowager told Dorothy that she would rather dear Bella married somebody simpler than poor Lord Beccles, to which Dorothy retorted that it might be difficult to find even a commoner more simple. Moonbeam's victories as a two-year-old had restored that self-confidence which had been so shaken since her marriage; Dorothy, like most nations and most human beings, was more admirable in adversity than in triumph. The disposition she had shown to recognize her suburban family did not last; she knew that the integument with which she was so carefully wrapping up her reality could be stripped from it by her relations in a second. Only now, after she had been a countess for six years, had Dorothy discovered the narrow bridge that is swung over the center of the universe—the well-laid and lighted bridge so delicately adjusted to eternity that the least divergence from correctness by one of its frequenters might be enough to imperil its balance. That bridge Dorothy was now crossing with all her eyes for her feet, as it were, and she certainly could not afford to be distracted by a family. If Sylvia Scarlett had been in London to watch this new progress she would have made many unkind jokes about the countess; but Sylvia was away acting in America, and in any case she would have found the door of 129 Curzon Street closed against her.

The dowager worried over the way Dorothy was ignoring her mother, and, fortified with strong smelling-salts, she braved the Underground to pay a visit to West Kensington, an experience she so thoroughly enjoyed that she could not keep it a secret for long, but one day began to praise the beauty of Edna and Agnes.

"Frankly, my dear Dorothy," she told her daughter-in-law, "I must say I think that you would be likely to have much more success as a match-maker for your sisters than for dear Bella and dear Connie, who even in London seem unable to avoid that appearance of having just run up and down a very windy hill. Why not have Edna and Agnes to live with you until they're married? And when they are married invite the youngest two, who will also be very beautiful girls, I'm convinced. Really, I never saw such complexions as you and all your sisters have."

Dorothy thought the dowager's suggestion most impracticable.

"Yes, but my most impracticable suggestions nearly always turn out well."

Perhaps, so sure was she of the impression that Agnes and Edna would create in a London ballroom, the dowager would have had her way if she had remained in town for the spring, but in the month of February, anticipating St. Valentine's Day by a week, the Rev. Thomas Hemming wrote from Cherrington to say that Mrs. Paxton, his godmother, had just offered him the living of Newton Candover in Hampshire and would Lady Constantia Clare become Lady Constantia Hemming? Lady Constantia would. The trousseau was bought under the eyes of Dorothy, who, regardless of the fact that she was going to marry a parson, insisted that Connie should look beyond viyella for certain items. Soon after Easter Mr. Beadon had to find another curate and Connie's room at Clare Lodge was empty.

Tony was too much occupied with Moonbeam's chances of winning the two thousand guineas at the end of April to bother who married his sister; but he wrote her a generous check that compensated for the decline in value of the vicar's glebe at Newton Candover.

"And I suppose," said Dorothy, "that next January Connie will have a son."

"Never mind," said her husband. "Next June you and I shall have the Derby winner."

Honest William Cobbett had made no secret of his conviction that Moonbeam was going to canter away with the Guineas, and in the ring his patron's horse was favorite at five to two.

"It'll have to be something very hot and dark that can beat him," he told Clarehaven. "Has your lordship betted very plentiful?"

"I shall drop about ten thousand if the colt fails," said Clarehaven, airily. "But most of my big bets are for the Derby. I got sixes against him twice over to two thousand and fives twelve times in thousands. If he wins to-day I shall plunge a bit."

The trainer blinked his limpid blue eyes.

"Oh, then you don't consider you've done anything in the way of plunging so far?"

"Nothing," said Clarehaven, flicking his mount and calling to Dorothy to ride along with him to the Birdcage. They had taken a small house for the meeting, and they were just off to escort Moonbeam to the starting-post. Lonsdale and Tufton had also come down to Newmarket, the former mounted under protest on a hack which he rode as if he were driving a car.

"Well, so long, Cobbett," the owner cried. "Hope we shall all be feeling as happy in another half-hour as we are now."

"Never fear, my lord. As I told you, there's only the Diavola colt to be afraid of. There's not a bit of doubt he won the Dewhurst in rare fashion, and of course that made his win at Epsom in the Woodcote look good. And now Sir James has gone and sold him for seven thousand guineas with a contingency to this man Houston—somebody new to racing. Well, seven thousand guineas is a nice little price, and there's been a lot of money forthcoming from the Winsley crowd. Dick Starkey always tries to serve up something extra hot for Newmarket. There's nothing gives greater delight to a provincial stable like Starkey Lodge than to do us headquarter folk out of the Guineas, which, as you may say, is our specialty. Stupid name, though, to give such a nice-looking animal. Chimpanzee!"

Dorothy uttered an exclamation. She divined the owner's name at once, and when Lonsdale told her it was Leopold Hausberg who had been away in South Africa and returned more rich than ever with a license to call himself Lionel Houston in future, she was not at all surprised, but her heart began to beat faster.

"Come along, come along, you two. We sha'n't be in time to escort the horses from the Birdcage."

"I say, Tony," said Lonsdale, anxiously, "the bookies are shouting twenty to one bar two, and Moonbeam has gone out to eleven to four."

"Damn!" ejaculated his owner. "I wonder if there's time for me to get any more money on?"

"No, leave it alone," Lonsdale begged. "Good Heavens! It makes me feel absolutely sick when I think of having ten thousand pounds on the result of one race. Why, compared with that, flying is safer than walking."

Two Cambridge undergraduates riding by jostled his cob so roughly that for the next few moments his attention was bent on maintaining himself in the saddle.

"Flying would certainly be safer than riding for you," Clarehaven laughed.

"The horse's mechanism is primitive, that's what it is—it's primitive," said Lonsdale. "And to risk ten thousand pounds on a primitive mechanism like a horse—Shut up, you brute, you're not entered for the Guineas. I say, this steering-gear is very unreliable, you know."

Dorothy had wanted to ask Lonsdale more about the owner of Chimpanzee; but at this moment the sun burst forth from behind a great white April cloud full-rigged, the shadow of which floated over the glittering green of the Heath just as the horses emerged from the Birdcage, escorted on either side by horsemen and horsewomen of fame and beauty. It was a fair scene, to play a part in which Dorothy exultantly felt that it was worth while to lose even more than £10,000. The coats of the horses shimmered in the sunlight; the colors of the jockeys blended and shifted like flowers in the wind; no tournament of the Middle Ages with all its plumes and pennons could have offered a fairer scene.

Tufton joined his friends, and, turning their mounts, they rode back toward the winning-post.

"I say, Tony, Chimpanzee has shunted to three's—only a fraction's difference now between him and Moonbeam," he was murmuring.

"Tell me more about Houston," said Dorothy to Lonsdale. "I don't think I can bear to watch the race."

"Cheer-oh, Doodles! You can't feel more queasy than I do. And I've told you all I know about Houston."

"But why should he call his horse Chimpanzee?"

There was a roar from the crowd.

"They're off!"

They were off on that royal mile of Newmarket.

"Flitten was told to ride him out from the start. Damn him, why doesn't he do so?" said Tony.

"He is, old boy. He's all right. Don't get nervy," said Tufton.

"Which is Chimpanzee?"

"That bay on the outside."

"What colors?"

"Yellow. Harcourt up."

"Take him along! Take him along! Good God, he's not using the whip already, is he?"

"No, no! No, no!"

"Damnation!" cried Tony, "why didn't we keep to the inclosure? I believe my horse is beaten. Don't look round, you little blighter! It's not an egg-and-spoon race."

The spectators were roaring like the sea.

"Moonbeam! Chimpanzee! Moonbeam! Moonbeam!" was shouted in a crescendo of excitement.

There was a momentary lull.

"Moonbeam by a head," floated in a kind of unisonant sigh along the rails.

"O Lord!" Lonsdale gulped. "I'd sooner drive a six-cylinder Lee-Lonsdale at sixty miles an hour through a school treat."

The strain was over; the noble owner had led in the noble winner; the ceremonies of congratulation were done; there was a profitable settlement to expect on Monday; yet Dorothy was ill at ease. The resuscitation of Hausberg clouded her contentment. Coincidence would not explain his purchase of the Diavola colt, his naming of it Chimpanzee, and his running it to beat Moonbeam. To be sure, he had failed, but a man who had taken so much trouble to create an effect would be more eager than ever after such a failure to ... "to do what?" she asked herself. Was he aiming at revenge? Such a fancy was melodramatic, absurd ... after all these years deliberately to aim at revenge for a practical joke. Besides, she had had nothing to do with the affair in St. John's Wood. Nor had Tony except as an accessory after the fact. Yet it was strange; it was even sinister. And how odd that Lonsdale should be present at this sinister resurrection.

"Lonnie," she said, "do you remember about the monkey?"

"What monkey? Did you have a monkey on Moonbeam?"

"Not money, you silly boy—the chimpanzee you put in Hausberg's rooms."

"Of course I remember it. So does he, apparently, as he's called his horse after it."

"I know. I feel nervous. I think he's going to bring us bad luck."

"Hello, Doodles, you're looking very gloomy for the wife of the man who is going to win the Derby," said Tony, coming up at that moment, all smiles. "I've just bet fifty pounds for you on one of Cobbett's fillies, which he says is a good thing for the Wilbraham. And the stable's in luck."

Dorothy won £250 in a flash, it seemed—the race was only four furlongs—and when in the last race of the day she backed the winner of the Bretby Handicap and won another £250 Tony told her cheerfully that she ought not to gamble because she was now a monkey to the good. Dorothy was depressed. The £500, outside the ill omen of its being called a monkey in slang, assumed a larger and more portentous significance by reminding her of the £500 she had borrowed from her mother when she first went on the stage and of the way she had invested some of it afterward with Leopold Hausberg. All her delight in Moonbeam's victory had been destroyed by a dread of the unknown, and she suddenly pulled Tony's sleeve, who was busily engaged in taking bets against his horse for the Derby. He turned round rather irritably.

"What is the matter with you?"

"Give it up," she begged. "Don't bet any more."

"Give up betting when I've just won twenty-five thousand pounds over the Guineas and am going to win one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds over the Derby? Besides, I thought you were going to live happily ever afterward if Moonbeam won?"

He turned away again with a laugh, and Tufton's grave head-shake was not much consolation to Dorothy. She was walking away a few paces in order not to overhear Tony's jovial badinage with the bookmakers, when a suave voice addressed her over the shoulder and, looking round, she saw Leopold Hausberg.

"You've forgotten me, Lady Clarehaven," he was saying. "I must explain that I—"

"Yes, yes," Dorothy interrupted, quickly, "you're Mr. Houston. I've just been told so by Mr. Lonsdale, whom no doubt you also remember."

She mentioned Lonsdale's name deliberately to see if Houston would speak about the monkey or even show a hint of displeasure at the mention of Lonsdale's name, but there was no shadow on his countenance, and he only asked her if she would not introduce him to her husband.

"I should like to congratulate him," he said, "though his win hit me pretty hard."

At this moment Tony with a laugh closed his betting-book and joined them.

"By Jove! there's not a sportsman among you," he called back to the bookmakers. "What do you think, Doodles? There's not one of them who'll give me four thousand to a thousand against Moonbeam for the Derby.... I'm sorry, I didn't see you were talking to somebody."

Dorothy made the introduction.

"I'll give you four thousand to a thousand, Lord Clarehaven," the new-comer offered. "Or more if you wish to bet. I don't think my horse showed his true form to-day. He swerved badly at the start, and my jockey says he was kicked."

Clarehaven was delighted to find somebody who would lay against Moonbeam, and he entered in his book a bet of £20,000 to £5,000.

"I had the pleasure of meeting Lady Clarehaven before her marriage," Houston was explaining. "I should have called upon you long ago, but I've been away for some years in South Africa."

"Making money, eh?" said Tony, holding in his mouth like a cigarette the pencil that was going to make money for him.

"I've not done so badly," said the other, deprecatingly.

"Look here, you must dine with us to-night," Tony declared, cheerily. "We're having a little celebration at the Blue Boar."

"Delighted, I'm sure. That's what I always like about racing," said Houston, "it brings out all our best sporting qualities as a nation."

Dorothy thought her husband was going to say something rude, but she need not have been worried. He had no intention of being rude to a man who would lay so heavily against the horse he thought was bound to win. In fact, he went out of his way to be specially friendly to Houston, and during the month of May the financier was at Curzon Street almost every day. Moreover, he brought with him others like himself who were willing to bet heavily with Clarehaven, and Dorothy began to think that even Captain Keith and Mrs. Mainwaring and those Saturday afternoons of peroxide and pink powder at Windsor or Lingfield Park were better than this nightmare of hooked noses and splay mouths.

"Well," said Lonsdale, "if anybody ever talks to me again about the 'lost' tribes or the missing link, I shall ask him if he's looked in Curzon Street. He'll find both there."

"Tony's being a little bit promiscuous," said Henry Tufton. "But of course one must remember that the king was very fond of Jews. And then there was Disraeli, don't you know, and the late queen."

Just before the Derby, Houston, whom, in spite of the menace he seemed to hold out against the future of Tony's career on the turf, Dorothy could not help liking in the intervals when she forgot about her premonitions of misfortune, said to her in a tone that it would have been hard to accuse of insincerity:

"Look here, I want to show you I'm a true friend, and I warn you that my horse is going to win the Derby. Nothing can beat him. Tell Clarehaven to hedge. I wish I'd not laid that bet now, for I hate taking his money. I suppose he'd be insulted if I offered to cancel the bet? But I would, if he would."

Dorothy told Tony about Houston's offer; but he laughed at her and said that, like all Jews, Houston did not relish losing his money. Nevertheless, finding that his liabilities were alarmingly high and knowing that Houston, not content with laying against Moonbeam, was backing Chimpanzee wherever he could, Tony invested some money on the second favorite and declined to lay another halfpenny against him. As a matter of fact, the money he invested thus was in comparison with the thousands for which he had backed Moonbeam a trifle; but rumor exaggerated the sum, and when Chimpanzee won the Derby, with Moonbeam just shut out of a place, there were unpleasant rumors in the clubs.

Dorothy did not go to Epsom—her nerves could not have stood the strain—and when she heard of Moonbeam's defeat she was grateful to her impulse. Nowadays her self-confidence was very easily upset, and from the moment Houston had appeared upon the scene at Newmarket she had never in her heart expected that Moonbeam would win the great race.

It was Tony himself who brought her the bad news. In a gray tail-coat and with gray top-hat set askew upon his flushed face—flushed with more than temper and disappointment, she thought—he strode up and down the smoking-room at Curzon Street, swinging his field-glasses round and round by their straps, until she begged him not to break the chandelier.

"Break the chandelier," he laughed. "That's good, by Jove! What about breaking myself? You don't seem to understand what this means, my dear Doodles. I've lost sixty thousand pounds over that cursed animal. Sixty thousand pounds! Do you hear? And I've got four days to find the money. Do you realize I shall have to mortgage Clare in order to settle up on Monday?"

"Mortgage Clare?" Dorothy gasped; she turned white and swayed against the table. At that moment Tony let the straps escape from his hand and the glasses went crashing into a large mirror.

"Yes, mortgage Clare," he repeated, savagely.

It was only the noise of the broken glass that kept her from fainting; weakly she pointed at the mirror and with a wavering smile upon her usually firm lips she whispered something about seven years of bad luck.

"Well, it's nothing to laugh about," said Tony.

"I wasn't laughing. Oh, Tony, you can't lose Clare; you mustn't."

"Oh well, I mayn't lose it. I may have some luck late in the season. But my other horses have let me down badly so far."

"You won't go on betting?"

"How else am I to get back what I've lost? I can't make sixty thousand pounds by selling papers!"

"Oh, but you...." She put her hand up to her forehead and sank into one of those comfortable chairs upholstered in red leather. "How did Cobbett explain Moonbeam's defeat?" She felt that, however agonizing, she must have the tale of the race to give her an illusion of action, and to silence these bells that were ringing in her brain: "Clare! Clare! Clare!"

"Cobbett?" exclaimed Tony, viciously. "He's about fit to train a bus-horse to jog from Piccadilly to Sloane Street. 'The colt doesn't like the Epsom course, and that's about the size of it,' said Mr. Cobbett to me. 'Course be damned, you old plowboy!' I told him. 'If you hadn't insisted upon giving the mount to that cursed apprentice of yours my horse would have won.' 'I don't think it was the lad's fault, my lord,' said Cobbett, getting as red as a turkey-cock. 'Don't you dare to contradict me,' I said. By God! Doodles, I was in such a rage that it was all I could do not to take the obstinate old fool by the shoulders and shake the truth into him. 'I'd contradict the King of England, my lord, if I trained his horses and he told me I didn't know my business,' 'Well, I tell you that you don't know your business,' I answered. 'Why didn't you let me do as I wanted and get O'Hara over from France to ride him?' 'If you remember, my lord, in the Woodcote Stakes, we gave the mount to Harcourt, and he made a mess of the race.' I couldn't stand there shouting 'O'Hara! Not Harcourt!' It wouldn't have been dignified in the paddock, and so I just told him quietly that I should have to consider if after to-day's fiasco I could still intrust my horses to a man who wouldn't listen to reason; after that I pulled myself together with a couple of stiff brandies and drove the car home myself. By the way, I ran over a kid in Hammersmith and broke its leg or something. Altogether it's been my worst day from birth up."

Dorothy would have liked to reproach him for drinking, to have expressed her dismay at the accident to the child, to have whispered a word of hope for the future, to have taken his foolish flushed face between her hands and kissed it ... but the only speech and action she could trust herself to make or take was to ring for a footman to sweep up the broken glass from the floor of the smoking-room.

Two days later, while Tony was hard at work raising the money to pay his debts on Monday, a letter came from Newmarket:

Houston, who happened to be with Tony when this letter arrived, asked him why he did not train with Richard Starkey at Winsley on the Berkshire Downs.

"Yes, that's all very well," said Clarehaven, "but what about the Leger?"

"I'm not going to run Chimpanzee for the Leger. In fact, I've sold him to an Australian syndicate for the stud. Your horse will be the only representative of the stable."

Finally Clarehaven's horses were transferred to Starkey Lodge, and Moonbeam, as the obvious choice of the stable, gave the public a good win at Doncaster. The victory did not do Clarehaven much good in narrower circles, where many people had backed Chimpanzee to win the Leger. The rumors that had gone round the clubs after the Derby sprang to life again, and with an added virulence circulated freely. Lord Stilton, as a friend of his father, warned Tony in confidence that he would not be elected to the Jockey Club and advised him to go slow for a while.

"If the Stewards wish for an explanation," said Tony, loftily, "they can have an explanation."

"It is not a question of your horse's running," said Lord Stilton. "Technically there are no grounds for criticism. But a certain amount of comment has been aroused by your change of stables and by your friendship with this man Houston. Altogether, my dear fellow, I advise you to go slow—yes, to go slow."

Tony, with the amount of money he had won back by Moonbeam's victory in the Leger, did not feel at all inclined to go slow, and with Richard Starkey at his elbow he bought several highly priced yearlings at the Doncaster sales. He would show that pompous old bore Stilton that the Derby could be won without being a member of the Jockey Club.

IV

Moonbeam's victory in the St. Leger had apparently freed Clare from mortgages, and it enabled the owner to meet a large number of bills that fell due shortly afterward. Dorothy, who was continually hearing from Tony how decently Houston was behaving to him, began to wonder if her dread of the Jew had not been hysterical; and when in October he proposed a cruise round the Mediterranean in his new yacht she did not attribute to the proposal a new and subtle form of danger. She and Houston were talking together in the drawing-room at Curzon Street while Tony was occupied with somebody who had called on business. During the summer these colloquies down in the smoking-room had kept Dorothy's nerves strung up to expect the worst when she used to hear Tony accompany the visitor to the door and come so slowly up-stairs after he was gone. But since Doncaster the interviews had been much shorter, and Tony had often run up-stairs at the end of them, leaving the visitor to be shown out by a footman. Throughout that trying time Houston had been always at hand, suave and attentive, not in the least attentive beyond the limits of an old friendship, but rather in the manner of Tufton, though of course with greater age and experience at the back of it. His ugliness, which, when Dorothy had first beheld it again so abruptly that afternoon in the ring at Newmarket had appalled her, was by now so familiar again that she was no longer conscious of it, or if she was conscious of it she rather liked it. Such ugliness strengthened Houston's background, and when Tony's affairs seemed most desperate gave Dorothy a hope; the more rugged the cliff the more easily will the wrecked mariner scale its forbidding face. Yes, Houston had really been invaluable during an exhausting year, and when now he proposed this yachting trip she welcomed the project.

"I think it would be good for Clarehaven to get him away from England for a while—to give him a change of air and scene. We'll lure him with the promise of a few days at Monte Carlo, and something will happen to make it impossible to go near Monte Carlo, eh? A nice, quiet little party. I have cabins for eight guests. Three hundred ton gross. Nothing extravagant as a yacht goes."

"And what do you call her? The Chimpanzee?" asked Dorothy, with a smile.

"No, no, no," he replied. "The Whirligig. A good name for a small yacht, don't you think?"

"Tell me," said Dorothy, earnestly. "Why did you call your horse Chimpanzee? You know, when I first heard it, I felt you were still brooding over that stupid business in those flats. What were they called?"

"Lauriston Mansions."

"Ah, you haven't forgotten the name. I had. But what centuries ago all that seems."

"Does it?"

"To me, oh, centuries!" she exclaimed, vehemently.

Houston's eyes narrowed, as if he were seeking to bring that far-off scene into focus with the present.

"I oughtn't to have reminded you of it," said Dorothy, lightly. "It was tactless of me."

"Not at all," said Houston. "Besides, contemporary with that there are many pleasant hours to remember" ... he hesitated for a second and blew out the end of the sentence in a puff of cigarette smoke ... "with you."

"Yes, I have often wondered why you were so kind to me. I think I must have been very tiresome in those days."

"On the contrary, you were the loveliest girl in London."

"Girl," Dorothy half sighed.

"Come, my dear Lady Clarehaven." Was he mocking her with the title? "My dear Lady Clarehaven," he repeated, with the least trace of emphasis upon the conventional epithet. "You don't expect me to be so bold as to say what you are now?"

For one moment he opened wide his dark eyes, and in that moment Dorothy decided that the party on the yacht should include the dowager and Bella. Simultaneously with this decision she was saying, with a laugh of affected dismay, "Oh no, please, Mr. Houston."

Tony was not at first in favor of the proposed trip, and pleaded that he wanted to see how his yearlings wintered; but Houston insisted that Starkey would look after them better without being worried by the owner. Then Tony urged the claims of pheasants. He had neglected his pheasants of late, and it would be a pity to let the Clare coverts alone for another year.

"Besides, I ought to look after the property," he added.

Dorothy had heard this declaration of duty urged too often to be taken in by it any longer. A week in Devonshire would cure Tony of a landowner's anxiety whether about his pheasants or his peasants; after that he would discover in his bland way that London was more convenient than the country.

"You can get plenty of shooting in the Mediterranean," said Houston. "There's a desert island in the Ægean with mouflon that nobody ever succeeds in getting."

"What? I'll bet you two hundred to one in sovereigns that I bag a couple," Tony cried.

"I won't bet, because you'll lose your money. A friend of mine lay off for a week of fine weather—that's a rare occurrence in those waters—lost nearly a stone climbing the rocks, and at the end of it came away without hitting one."

"Ridiculous," Tony scoffed. "What gun did he use?"

"Don't ask me," laughed Houston. "All I know is he was a first-class shot, and if he couldn't succeed I don't believe anybody can."

"That's rot," Tony declared, angrily. "When are we going to start?"

"She's in commission and now lying at Plymouth, which will save your mother a long journey by train."

"My mother?" Tony echoed, in astonishment.

Dorothy revealed her plan for inviting the dowager and Bella, and Tony was so anxious to prove he was right about the mouflon that he made no objections.

"Then," Dorothy continued, "I thought Harry Tufton had better be asked. He'll be so good at buying souvenirs in port. Your mother is sure to want souvenirs, and you'd hate to scour round for them yourself."

"I suppose Lonnie couldn't come," Tony suggested.

Houston knitted his brows, but said hurriedly that Lonsdale would be an ideal passenger for a cruise. Dorothy did not like to oppose the suggestion; yet she was relieved when Lonsdale replied that, having luckily arrived on this earth many years after the Flood, he did not propose to slight dry land. "Sea-trips," he wrote, "beginning with the Ark's have always been crowded and unpleasant. Besides, I'm learning to fly."

"Silly ass!" said Tony, tearing up the note.

The dowager was rather fluttered by the notion of a cruise in a yacht. Her knowledge of the sea was chiefly derived from Lady Brassey's journal of a voyage in the Sunbeam, the continual references of which to seasickness were not encouraging. Bella, who since Connie's marriage had taken to writing short stories, was as eager for local color as a child for a box of paints, and her enthusiasm at the idea of visiting the classic sea was so loudly expressed that the dowager had not the heart to disappoint her. She did, however, make one stipulation that surprised her daughter-in-law.

"If I go," she said, "you must promise me to invite one of your sisters. Now please, Dorothy, listen to me. You owe it to them. Of course, I should like you to invite them all and your mother, who could talk to me while you were all climbing volcanoes and searching for the ruins of Carthage; but I dare say Mr. Houston won't have room. However, one of them you must invite."

And then suddenly the dowager's suggestion seemed to provide a perfect solution of a problem that had been vexing Dorothy. In thinking over Houston's attitude she had been forced to explain it by the existence of something like a tender feeling for herself. To speak of tenderness in connection with him seemed absurd; but she was beginning to fancy that perhaps in the old days he had in his heart all the time wanted her for himself. If that were so, he had certainly behaved very well both now and then. No doubt he had realized that so long as her marriage with Clarehaven was attainable he stood no chance; but if that should have definitely come to nothing, he must have intended to ask her to marry him. It was with that idea he had helped her with investments, had avoided the least hint of an ulterior motive, and had always treated her so irreproachably. If he had concealed his love so carefully in the past, it was not ridiculous to suppose that he might be in love with her now. The other day he had been on the verge of saying something much more intimate than anything in the most intimate conversation they had ever had together. Perhaps he fancied that she and Tony were nothing to each other now—alas! with gambling as his ruling passion Tony might have given Houston some reason to suppose that she no longer stood where she used to stand in his eyes—or perhaps with a real chivalry he had perceived the dangerous course that Tony was taking and wished to save her without obtruding himself too much. Poor ugly man, with all his wealth he was a pathetic figure. He would suffer when he saw how devoted she was to Tony; she had made up her mind to charm Tony back to his old adoration of herself; this cruise might be her last opportunity.

Then why not ask one of her sisters? Such a sister, reflecting if somewhat faintly her own glories, might console Houston for an eternal impossibility. In that case she must invite the eldest now at home, and with her roses and rich brown hair might serve as a substitute for herself.

"Of course she hasn't my personality," Dorothy admitted. "And she hasn't my brown eyes. But she is beautiful, and what an excellent thing it would be if Houston should marry her. Jews have such a sense of family duty."

With the inclusion of Agnes the party was complete, and in the middle of November The Whirligig left Plymouth for the Mediterranean. Tony's astonishment at the production of this beautiful sister-in-law was laughable; but if heavy weather in the Bay of Biscay had not blanched most of her roses, while Dorothy's own throve in the fierce Atlantic airs, that astonishment might have turned to something less laughable. Houston, indeed, did ask Dorothy once in an undertone if it was not rather imprudent of her deliberately to create a rival for herself; but by the time the yacht had rounded Cape St. Vincent and was lying at ease in the harbor of Cadiz Tony was nearly as much his wife's slave as he was in the first days of their marriage. Dorothy, who had felt a momentary qualm about the success of her project when she saw the effect of Agnes's fair form of England against this passionate beauty of the south, decided that, on the contrary, it would be this very effect that would impress Houston much more than Tony. So far as mortal women are concerned, she had never had to bother much about Tony except when she herself had been cold with him. The fickle goddess of fortune was her only rival; but on board The Whirligig he seemed out of reach of temptation by her. Yes, the party was well chosen. Tufton by this time had recovered sufficiently from the heavy seas to help the dowager obtain her souvenirs of the various ports at which they called, and she at last forgave him for his advice about the pergola; Bella, inspired by a visit to Fielding's tomb at Lisbon, which was the first assurance she had received that England even existed since the Lizard Light had dropped below the horizon, was much occupied with a diary of her impressions; Tony was occupied by herself; and what should Houston do except occupy himself with Agnes? At the same time Dorothy had her doubts. Whenever she was sitting quietly with Tony in some snug windless corner of the yacht their host would always find an excuse to intervene.

After Cadiz they called at Malaga, Cartagena, and Alicante, whence by Valencia and Barcelona they were to sail by the shores of France toward the lights of Monte Carlo, which Houston now wanted to visit, although in London he had said that nothing should induce him to take the yacht there. Tony unexpectedly argued against a visit to Monte Carlo, and was only eager to attack the mouflon on that inaccessible Ægean isle. So the yacht's course was set eastward from Alicante.

"Why did you change your mind about Monte Carlo?" Dorothy asked Houston.

"Isn't it fairly obvious?"

She thought he was going to seize her hand and plunge headlong into a declaration of passion; but he turned away quickly and called her attention to the view. They were passing the southern shores of Formentera, so close that upon the sandy beach flamingos preening their wings in the sunset were plainly visible. The yacht called at Cagliari and Palermo, visited the Ionian islands, and reached the Ægean by way of the Corinth canal. The bet about the mouflon had to be canceled in the end, because the sea was never sufficiently calm to allow a boat to be lowered off Antaphros, and was still less likely to remain calm long enough for a boat to leave the deserted island again. They made several attempts to land, sailing there from their headquarters at Aphros, the white houses of which, stained with the purple Bougainvillea and mirrored in the calm waters of the harbor, seemed eternally to promise fine weather. Luckily the island also offered sufficient entertainment to compensate Tony for the loss of the mouflon; there was a club of which many rich ship-owners were members, where high play at ÉcartÉ was the rule, and Tony, with the good luck that often attends strangers, repaid his hosts by winning from them nearly twenty thousand drachmas. The war in the Balkans made it difficult for the yacht to visit Constantinople, which was her original destination; and it was decided to substitute Alexandria and allow the members of the party to spend a few days in Cairo; from Egypt they would cruise along the coast of Syria, turn westward again by Cyprus and Rhodes, and with luck land a boat at Antaphros on the journey home, for Tony still regretted those mouflon.

Agnes would probably have found her stay in Aphros romantic enough at any time; but now with the supreme romance of war added and with handsome young Aphriotes going north upon their country's business by every steamer, she wished no higher ecstasy from this wonderful voyage. Agnes had enjoyed a great success on the island, where she had taught the young men and maidens to dance whatever ragtime was then the mode in West Kensington; where with them, when the dancing was done, she had climbed to the ruined temple of Aphrodite on the heights above the town and sat beneath a waning semilune that emptied her silver upon the bare and rounded hills, upon the sea, and upon a necklace of sapphire islands, past which the troopship now winking in the harbor below would sail at dawn. Like father, like son, even love shoots more arrows than usual in time of war. Agnes did not think that Egypt or Palestine could offer better than this, and when the parents of her new friends Antonia and Ariadne Venieris invited her to stay with them in their ancient house until the yacht came back, she begged her sister to make it easy for her to accept this invitation. Dorothy saw no reason to refuse, and they sailed away without her.

Three weeks later, when the yacht reached Rhodes, Dorothy found a letter from Madame Venieris awaiting her arrival, in which she announced that Agnes had married a young lieutenant called Sommaripa; she did not know what Lady Clarehaven would think of her; she did not know how to make her excuses; but at least she could assure Lady Clarehaven that the bridegroom, who was now in Thrace, was an excellent young man, an orphan with plenty of money and well regarded at court. Meanwhile, the bride must be her guest until peace was signed and her husband was released from service.

Agnes herself wrote as follows:

The news of her sister's escapade—well, it was something more than an escapade—affected Dorothy with a jealousy that she recognized for what it was in time to prevent herself from betraying the emotion she felt; so eager, indeed, was she to hide it that she proclaimed her approval of what Agnes had done, and so emphatically that the dowager was much agitated lest Bella should follow her example; but Bella did nothing more alarming than to sit down forthwith in the saloon and begin a very passionate and romantic story founded upon fact and drenched in local color.

Meanwhile, the Italian governor of Rhodes was taking steps to assure himself that The Whirligig was not a Greek war-ship with evil designs upon the Turkish population, which he was petting as a nurse pets a child she has lately had the gratification of smacking. As soon as the police spies guaranteed the harmlessness of the yacht the governor was hospitable and invited the members of the party to shoot the red-legged partridges and woodcock upon the Rhodian uplands. Tony, Bella, and Tufton accepted the invitation; the dowager, fearful lest Bella should envy the repose of some fascinating Turk's harem in the interior, accompanied them in the motor-car as far as the road permitted, where she alighted and passed the time in picking the red and purple anemones that blew in myriads all around, until the sportsmen had killed enough birds and were ready for lunch.

Houston suggested to Dorothy that they should take a walk round the town while the others were away; she accepted, for she was anxious to shake off this brooding jealousy which had oppressed her since the news in Agnes's letter.

"I shouldn't worry myself about your sister," he was saying.

Dorothy frowned to think he should have read her thoughts so easily."I'm not worrying. I think she has done exactly right."

"Envying her, in fact," Houston added.

"Why should I envy her?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Don't we always rather envy the people who do things with such decision? Don't we sometimes feel that we're wasting time?"

He said this so meaningly that Dorothy pretended not to hear what he had said and looked up to admire the fortified gate of St. Catherine through which they were passing.

"It's like Oxford!" she exclaimed.

Her jealousy of Agnes was stimulated by this comparison, for when they came to the Street of the Knights she was reminded of that day when she walked down the High with Sylvia, that Sunday afternoon which had been the prelude of everything. How many years ago?

"O God!" she exclaimed, reverting in her manner, as she often used in Houston's company, to that hard Vanity manner. "O God! I shall be twenty-nine in March!"

"I'm over forty."

"But you're a man. What does your age matter?"

She was looking at him, and thinking while she spoke how ugly he was. Perhaps he realized her thought, for his face darkened with that blush of the very sallow complexion, that blush which seems more like a bruise.

"You mean I'm too hideous?"

"Don't be silly. Let's explore this gateway."

They passed under a Gothic arch and found themselves in a cloistered quadrangle, so much like a small Oxford college that only a tall palm against the blue sky above the roofs told how far they were from Oxford.

"It's uncanny," said Dorothy. "How stupid Tony was to go off shooting without first exploring the town. How stupid of him!"

Dorothy wanted her husband's presence as she had never wanted it; she wanted to help the illusion that she was back in Oxford with all the adventure of life before her. She wanted to see him here in this familiar setting and revive ... what?

"I hope Agnes will be happy," she sighed.

Close by a couple of Jews in wasp-striped gabardines were arguing about something in a mixture of Spanish and Yiddish; without thinking and anxious only to get back to the present, Dorothy asked Houston if he could understand what they were talking about. Again that dark blush showed like a bruise.

"Why should I understand them?" he asked, savagely.

"No, of course. I really don't know," she stammered, in confusion, for she was thinking how much better a gabardine would suit Houston than his yachting-suit and how exactly his pendulous under lip resembled the under lips of the two disputants. An odd fancy came into her mind that she would rather like to be carried off by Houston, to be held in captivity by him in the swarming ghetto through which they had picked their way a few minutes ago, to sit peering mysteriously through the lattice of some crazy balcony ... to surrender to some one strong and Eastern and.... Oh, but this was absurd! The sun was hot in this quadrangle; she was in an odd state; it must be that the news about Agnes had upset her more than she had thought. At that moment her eyes rested upon the broken headpiece of a tomb that was leaning against the cloister, and she found herself reading in a dream: "Gilbert Clare of Clarehaven. With God. 1501." The palm still swayed against the blue sky; the Jews still chattered at one another. Dorothy looked round her with a dazed expression, and then impulsively knelt down among the rubble that surrounded the tombstone and read the words again: "Gilbert Clare of Clarehaven. With God. 1501." The Italian curator of the museum that was being formed in the old hospital drew near and explained to Dorothy in French that this was the tombstone of an English knight.

"An ancestor of mine," Dorothy told him.

The curator smiled politely; being a Latin, he certainly did not believe her.

"I've never seen you so much interested by anything," said Houston.

"I never have been so thrilled by anything," she declared. "Gilbert Clare of Clarehaven! Clarehaven! And when he left it he must have often thought of our little church on the headland; and when he died here, how he must have longed to be at home."

"Does Clare mean very much to you?" Houston asked.

"You could never imagine how much. For Clare I would do anything!"

"Anything? That's a rash statement."

"Anything," she repeated.

Houston tried to persuade the curator to let him have the tombstone for Dorothy to take away with her; but the curator was shocked at such a suggestion and explained that it was an unusual inscription—the earliest of the kind in English that he knew; he should have expected Latin at such a date.

The countess failed to rouse much enthusiasm in the earl about the tomb of his ancestor, but the dowager was glad he was with God; Bella had a subject for another story; and Tufton photographed it. The next day the wind seemed likely to shift round into the north, and The Whirligig left the exposed harbor, traveling past the mighty limestone cliffs of the Dorian promontory, past Cos and many other islands, until once more her anchor was dropped in the sheltered blue waters of Aphros.

There were interminable discussions at the house of Monsieur and Madame Venieris; but there was no doubt whatever that Agnes was married.

"And do you know, my dear Doodles," her sister added, when they were alone, "do you know I believe I'm already going to have a baby?"

Dorothy could stand no more; but when she begged that all speed should be made for England there came a series of breathless days during which Tony stalked the mouflon on the heights of Antaphros. In the end he actually did hit one, and though it fell at the foot of a difficult precipice he scrambled down somehow, raised the carcass with ropes, and rowed triumphantly away with it to the yacht. Houston tossed him double or quits for the sovereign he had won; Tony won five tosses in succession and thirty-two pounds.

"My luck's in," he shouted, gleefully. "Come on, Houston, full speed ahead. I want to see my horses again."

When the yacht reached Plymouth the whole party went ashore and traveled up to Clare.

"Yes," Houston admitted to Dorothy, "I can understand the appeal this sort of thing must have for anybody. It must be glorious here in summer. I suppose the deer look after themselves? Yes, it's a wonderful old place."

A week after their guests had left Tony and Dorothy followed them to London.

"Oh, by the way, Doodles," said Tony at Paddington, "I ought to have explained before, but I've got a little surprise for you. I had to sell one hundred and twenty-nine. I was offered a nailing good price."

"And where are we going to live?" she asked.

"Well, that's the surprise. You'll never guess. I've taken your old flat in Halfmoon Street."

Dorothy looked at Tony.

"You're not angry?" he asked.

"I think I'm past anger," she said, dully.

While they were driving to their new abode Dorothy decided that it would be easy to convince her family that such a romantic marriage was the right thing for Agnes, because her arguments would come from the depths of her heart.

"And I shall be twenty-nine in March," she kept thinking.

"Of course I kept all your favorite things," Tony was saying. "I sold the rest. The pictures fetched a deuced poor price. I hope that if the Clare pictures ever have to go I shall have more luck with them."

"I wonder you don't offer to sell me," said Dorothy, bitterly.

He squeezed her arm affectionately.

"Sha'n't have to do that just yet awhile. I'm going to have a lucky year. I felt that when I pipped that mouflon. Ever since I broke the glass at one hundred and twenty-nine I've been deuced uneasy. As soon as the house was sold I began winning at ÉcartÉ, and then I pipped that mouflon."

V

The sale of the house in Curzon Street revived all Dorothy's worst fears. If Tony could successfully hide from her knowledge such a transaction he was capable of announcing one day that Clare itself was gone. Life had not offered much stability since that fatal June except for the brief period when Tony's career upon the turf had accorded with the traditions of his order and had seemed to possess the dignity that confers itself automatically upon those who put forth their hands to claim their due, her existence had been periodically shaken like a town in the shadow of a volcano. Was not his marriage judged from the outside a contribution to failure similar to the running of Moonbeam in the Derby? Was she herself much more than a disappointing race-horse? She had failed to keep her classic engagements at Clare; she had failed to carry her weight in the big handicap at Curzon Street. Was the flat in Halfmoon Street a selling-plate? Oh, this flat, how it was haunted with the ghosts of old ambitions! The color schemes and patterns of the chintz might be different, but how familiarly the bells rang, how familiar was the sound of the doors opening and shutting, and the light upon her dressing-table ... and the rumble of the traffic ... leading whither?

"Tony, what do you want?" she asked, passionately, one morning when the sparrows were maddening her with their monotonous chirping praise of the sunshine.

"I want to win the Derby," he said.

"And lose everything else, even me?" she asked.

"And lose nothing," he maintained, obstinately. "Starkey fears nothing."

Starkey feared nothing! Starkey with his long, thin nose and red hair!

By now two of Tony's yearlings stood out well above the rest. Of these a bay colt by Cyllene out of Midsummer Night and, therefore, a half-brother of Moonbeam, had run well in the Brocklesby Stakes at Lincoln, still better in the Westminster Plate at the Epsom Spring Meeting, and had cantered away with the Spring Two-year-old Stakes at Newmarket. He was considered to be a certainty for the Woodcote Stakes; but on Starkey's advice Tony ran instead a chestnut filly by Spearmint out of Blushrose, who won with considerable ease, beating horses that had shown up well in the previous races. Clarehaven was jubilant; Starkey feared nothing; they had next year's Derby in their hands. It had been just after this last victory that Tony had affirmed his only ambition in life to be the Derby. At Ascot, still running unnamed, the filly won the Coventry Stakes; half an hour afterward Moonbeam took the Ascot Stakes by five lengths, and two days later, starting as an odds on favorite, he won the Gold Cup without being extended; finally on the same day the Midsummer Night colt won the New Stakes and was named Full Moon, for certainly the fortunes of Clare seemed in their complement.

"There's never been such an Ascot," said Tony to his wife.

Houston had had to go to South Africa soon after he returned from the Mediterranean cruise; while he was still away, Tony's luck touched its zenith when Moonbeam won the Eclipse Stakes at Sandown Park.

"Though it's lucky Mr. Houston sold Chimpanzee to that Australian syndicate," said Starkey. "Because I give you my word, my lord, that Chimpanzee was a better horse than Moonbeam, just as the filly is better than the colt."

"I think you're wrong about Moonbeam," Tony argued, "though you may be right about the filly."

When Houston reached England in July he motored down to Winsley with the Clarehavens to discuss future plans with the trainer, and when the old argument about the respective merits of Chimpanzee and Moonbeam began, as usual, he laughed, saying that for him the discussion was a barren one, because after this Derby victory he did not intend to tempt fortune any more.

"I wish you could persuade Tony to follow your example," said Dorothy.

"Don't be silly, old thing. I haven't won the Derby yet," Tony proclaimed, in a hurt voice.

"Don't be afraid, my lord; you can't lose it next year, not if you tried. Of course I'm not going to say yet for certain whether it'll be with the colt or with the filly; but I think it'll be with the filly."

"Which reminds me," said Tony. "We haven't given the lady a name yet."

"Why not Vanity Girl?" Houston suggested.

"Of course," Tony shouted, gleefully. "Vanity Girl she is."

Dorothy protested that the name would bring bad luck and begged for Mignonette instead.

"Mignonette won a race at Liverpool only yesterday," said the trainer.

"But there must be plenty of other names that haven't been used," Dorothy insisted. "As we've got the Full Moon of Clare, why shouldn't we call the filly Supporting Angel?"

"Well," said Mr. Starkey, "with her ladyship's permission, I prefer Vanity Girl. It sounds like a winner."

Tony and Houston were emphatically in favor of Vanity Girl, and the filly was named accordingly. Dorothy stayed behind to contemplate the beautiful creature in her box, the fair, shimmering creature lately anonymous and now burdened with what was surely a title of ill omen.

"But you have no ambitions," said Dorothy. "If you fail you won't mind. What do you care about your purple clothing with its black border and its silver coronet?"

Dorothy left the dim, cool stable and emerged into the glare of the July noon. She felt sad about the filly's name, and, unwilling to meet the others until she had recovered from her depression, she walked away from Starkey Lodge, walked up the sloping single street of the little village of Winsley, the houses of which seemed to have drifted like leaves into this cranny of the bare downs. At the top of the street the village ended abruptly where a white road ran like a line of foam between a sea of grass that stretched skyward to right and left until the horizon faded into the summer haze.

"Thirty next March," said Dorothy, aloud. "And what have I done with my life?"

She envied the thistledown that floated by, envied its busy air and effect of traveling whither it would; compared with those winged seeds the blue butterflies seemed as irresolute and timorous of the future as herself ... herself.... A voice shouted that lunch was waiting, and there was Tony waving to her from the road. Lunch was waiting for herself; but for that thistledown what was waiting? Dorothy's clear-cut personality was becoming blurred; she never used to speculate about thistledown in cloud cuckoo land. Everybody noticed the change. Some had heard that there really was something between Dorothy Clarehaven and that fellow Houston; others knew for a positive fact that Tony Clarehaven neglected his wife; and all the women decided that she must be well over thirty by now.

Tony began to bet recklessly as soon as Houston returned, and by the autumn he was again in difficulties. Moonbeam failed to give two stone to a smart three-year-old in the Jockey Club Stakes, and he lost much more than Full Moon had made for him by winning the Boscawen Stakes the day before. But there had been no purchase at Tattersall's, no ambitious yearlings from Doncaster, for Tony had given his word to Dorothy that after next year's Derby he would retire from racing. In fact, to show that this time he was in earnest he sold all his horses except the two sons of Cyllene and Vanity Girl. The filly had just won a severe trial and on Starkey's advice was preferred to Full Moon for the Middle Park Plate. She was heavily backed, started a hot favorite, and was not placed. Tony declined to accept her running as true and backed her heavily to win the Dewhurst Plate. O'Hara was brought over from France to ride her, and she was again unplaced. Some people declared she was no stayer, some that her victories at Epsom and Ascot had been flukes; others spoke of coughing in the Starkey Lodge Stables; a few murmured that a coup for next year's Derby was being carefully engineered.

"I knew it would bring bad luck to call her Vanity Girl," Dorothy lamented. "Sell her. Get rid of her. Get rid of them all."

"Sell the Derby winner?" Tony ejaculated. "My dear Doodles, you surely must realize that her form at Newmarket was too bad to be true. If she can beat Full Moon at home, and if Full Moon can beat the winner of the Middle Park as he did in the Boscawen Stakes, one or other of them must win the Derby. We'll see how they winter. Meanwhile I've sold Moonbeam to Houston. He paid me twenty-six thousand pounds. He intends to start a stud; I'm bound to say he got my horse cheap; whatever Starkey says, Chimpanzee would never have beaten him again; but I wanted the money."

"I'm sorry you've had to sell Moonbeam, but do sell Vanity Girl, too. Don't bet any more on any of them. Run Full Moon for the Derby, and if he wins be content with that. Then we could start a stud at Clare ourselves. But do get rid of Vanity Girl."

She felt as the dowager must have felt when she was trying to dissuade Tony from marrying an actress; she instanced every disadvantage she could think of for the filly; but Tony was obstinate.

They were going out that afternoon to the Pierian Hall. Sylvia Scarlett, after over two years' absence in America, had returned to England and suddenly taken the fancy of the public with a new form of entertainment that was considered very futurist. Dorothy did not think that her performance deserved all the praise it had received, but she felt jealous of Sylvia's success and, turning to Tony in the interval, said, fiercely, that sometimes she wished she had never married him.

"I should have done better to stick to the stage," she vowed.

"If you're wishing you hadn't married me because you'd like to be doing this sort of thing," said Tony, "you can spare your regrets. This, my dear Doodles, is the rottenest show I ever saw in my life."

"But it's a success."

"Only because it's so devilish peculiar. If I walked down Bond Street in pajamas I should attract a certain amount of attention the first time I did it, but people would get used to it, and I should soon be forgotten. By the way, would you like to send round a card?"

"No, no," said Dorothy. "I've seen quite enough of her from where we are."

"Don't get bitter, Doodles. I don't know what's come over you lately. You seem to hate everything and everybody."

That winter was a miserable one, because Tony took to baccarat again, and, having been accustomed to bet on the turf in large sums, he carried his methods to the tables with such recklessness that Dorothy, unable to stand the strain, left him in London and went down to Clare. She had a notion to kill herself out hunting, but even in this she was unsuccessful, for in February all the hunters, including Mignonette, were sold. Moreover, at the end of the month a valuer arrived with an authorization from Tony to complete the details for a forthcoming auction of the whole property as it stood, pictures and all. Dorothy hastened up to London and demanded what was the matter.

"The matter is that I've got to sell Clare."

"Sell Clare?" she repeated. "I suppose you mean mortgage it?"

"Mortgage it? It's mortgaged already."

"But you paid that off."

"Yes, once. But you don't suppose that I've always got money handy?" he asked, petulantly. "Some damned firm has bought up all my bills; I'm being pressed all round; and the Jews won't lend me another farthing."

"Then you must sell the horses."

"The Derby winner? They're my only chance of keeping out of the bankruptcy court. They're all we have, Doodles."

"You have Clare."

"How can I pay the interest on the mortgages and live at Clare? Try to be a little reasonable. I've got a good offer, and the money will come in very handy for the final plunge."

"You're mad."

"All right. I'm mad."

"But your mother?"

"I've given Greenish notice to leave Cherrington Cottage and I'm reserving that from the sale."

"But what will your mother live on?"

"Oh, of course her jointure will be paid. Besides, I tell you that this season with Full Moon and Vanity Girl I simply can't go wrong. The mistake I made was playing baccarat with my ready cash."

"Won't Houston help you?"

"My dear Doodles, it's Houston who's going to buy Clare."

She was silent before the revelation of what for long she had surmised. The quadrangle of the hospital in Rhodes where she had admitted openly that for Clare she would do anything flashed upon her vision, and the thought of that Oriental patience practised for so long terrified her. His desire for her must have been kindled years ago, a desire that, once kindled, had been fed by the will to revenge himself for being what he was upon Clarehaven for being what he was. It was Houston who had subtly helped his rival along the road to ruin, taking him by the arm as it were to the edge of the precipice and toppling him over. Now it was her place to interview this enemy, plead with him, entreat him to be content with what he had done already ... but of what use would entreaties be? Of no use except to stimulate the lust of victory.

"You can't sell Clare to Houston," she was saying, mechanically, lest her silence should be noticed. "You can't sell Clare to Houston," she was repeating; and then she was off again, chasing the excited, restless ideas in her brain until she should have driven them like poultry into a corner and be able to pick the victim that should serve her best. Yes, yes, if Houston really did covet her, she still had a chance to preserve Clare. There was no weaker adversary for a woman whose heart was untouched than a man who was madly in love ... no weaker adversary.... Should she write to Houston and give him the idea that by pressing her hard he could win? In the past she had known how to cook a dozen geese in fierce ovens without cooking her own by mistake, without even burning her fingers. If Houston had waited years, he would surely be willing to risk a few more weeks.

"You can't sell Clare to Houston," she said, once more.

"For God's sake, don't go on repeating that like a parrot," said Tony. "I'm going round to settle the matter now."

A few moments later the door of the flat slammed behind him. Houston lived in Albany, not five minutes away, and Dorothy went across to the telephone.

"Yes? Who's speaking?"

"Dorothy Clarehaven. Listen," she said, hurriedly. "Once you lent me money, or at any rate you helped me make money, and you were always very decent about it. Won't you do the same thing again? You know that Tony is putting everything on the ability of one of our two horses to win the Derby. Tell me—there's every reason to suppose he will win the Derby—why shouldn't you lend him enough to prevent his selling Clare?"

"Why not, indeed?" said Mr. Houston. "But what's the security?"

"Aren't the horses a security?"

"Horses are very capricious, almost as capricious as women."

"Would you prefer a woman as security?" she asked, trying to rake up from nine years ago a coquetry that had once been so profitable. It was easier by telephone. "Supposing I offered myself as security?"

So much was she playing a part of long ago that instinctively she had used her old invincible gesture of lightly touching a man's sleeve. That also was easier by telephone.

"I could lend a good deal," twanged the voice of the buyer along the wires. "I could lend a good deal."

"Very well then," said Dorothy. "Lend me the money."

"By telephone? Not good enough. Come, come, let's be frank, let's be brutally frank. You know you're worth twenty Derby winners to me; but, as I said, women are more capricious than horses. I'm no longer a schoolboy. Are you in earnest or not?"

"Of course I'm in earnest," she said. "Why should you think I wasn't?"

"So much in earnest that you'll come to my rooms this afternoon and tell me so?"

"Yes, if you like," she replied, without hesitating. "But you must prove to me that you're in earnest too. Send me something on account."

"How much do you want?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said. "About fifty thousand pounds I suppose."

Dorothy's sense of proportion about large sums of money had been destroyed by her husband's extravagant betting. When one lives with a man who will win £50,000 at Ascot and lose it all and more the following week, it is difficult to preserve a table of comparative values. She supposed that £50,000 would represent about half the price of Clare, and the importance she attributed to Clare gave money such a relative unimportance that she saw nothing even faintly ridiculous in demanding a sum of this magnitude from Houston. Perhaps he was impressed by the size of her demand into believing that she really was in earnest about accepting his proposals; even a financier like himself might be excused for supposing that a woman, one of the most beautiful women in England and a countess to boot, does not ask for £50,000 without being in earnest. At the same time it appealed to his sense of humor that any woman, even England's most beautiful countess, should ask for £50,000 by telephone.

"Why, it's not even a note of hand," he chuckled, and his laugh, traveling from Albany to Halfmoon Street along the wires, lost its mirth on the way and reached Dorothy with the sound of a dropped banjo.

"Well, I must have something to prove you're in earnest," she argued, fiercely. "Tony is on his way to see you now. He'll be with you in another minute. Tell him that as a friend you can't let him sell Clare. Offer him enough to tide him over the Derby. I'm willing to risk everything on that."

"Are you trying to tell me that if Clarehaven pulls off the Derby our arrangement is canceled? Ring off. Nothing doing, dear lady."

Away in Albany she heard a bell shrill; it was like a prompter's warning of the play's ending.

"That's Tony now," she cried. "Do what I ask. Give him enough. He'll say how much is necessary for the moment. Lend it to him on the security of Clare. Buy up his mortgages. Do what you like, and if Tony comes back with Clare still his, at any rate until he has lost all or saved all on the Derby, I'll come to Albany this afternoon and thank you."

"Tangibly?" murmured Houston.

"Tangibly."

Her agitated breath had so bedewed the mouthpiece that when with trembling hands she replaced the holder it was like being released from a kiss.

VI

Tony came back from his visit to Houston in a temper of serene optimism.

"Well, Doodles," he cried, gaily, "I've saved Clare for you."

"Oh, you've saved Clare, have you?" She could not resist a slight accentuation of the pronoun, but he did not notice it.

"Yes, Houston was very decent. I told him how much I hated getting rid of the old place, and he was very decent. Of course he knows from Starkey that the Derby is a certainty and that in Full Moon and Vanity Girl I've got the two best three-year-olds in England."

"You're still infatuated with the filly?"

"Now wait a minute. Don't begin arguing till you hear what's been decided. Houston is going to lend me enough cash to pay off the present mortgages of Clare, and when that is done I'm going to mortgage the place to him on the understanding that if I don't settle up on the Monday after the Derby he takes immediate possession. I told him that I should want some ready money, and he offers to buy whichever horse I don't run in the Derby."

"Then sell him Vanity Girl," said Dorothy, quickly. She could hardly refrain from adding, "One of us he must have."

"Don't be in such a hurry. At present Full Moon has engagements in the Two Thousand Guineas and the Derby, also in the Grand Prix and the Leger. Vanity Girl is entered for the Thousand Guineas, the Derby, and the Oaks. I shall run Full Moon for the Guineas; if he wins he will be the Derby favorite. In that case I shall scratch Vanity Girl for the Thousand Guineas, and we'll have a secret trial at Winsley. Houston hasn't taken Moonbeam away yet, and Starkey is to put him into strong work for this trial. If Full Moon shows up best in the trial I shall sell Vanity Girl to Houston, who will run her in the Oaks; then I shall back Full Moon for the Derby till the cows come home. But if, as Starkey thinks and as I think, Vanity Girl is the goods, Houston is to have Full Moon for ten thousand pounds as soon as I've scratched him for the Derby. I don't want to scratch him until I've got my money out on the filly, but I shall get busy quickly, and the public will have plenty of time to know which horse I think is going to win. Then you and I, Doodles dear, will retire from the turf and live ever afterward at Clare."

"And if Full Moon doesn't win the Guineas?"

"Oh, I've thought of that. In that case I shall run Vanity Girl in the Thousand Guineas, declare to win with either in the Derby, and Houston is to have his pick after the race for ten thousand pounds."

"And you've thought out all this wonderful and complicated plan of campaign?"

"Not entirely," Tony admitted.

"Not at all," said Dorothy, sharply. "You know perfectly well that Houston thought out every detail of it."

She wondered if a man who could juggle like this with the future of horses might not be equally expert with women. But no, he wanted the woman; he did not want the horses. She sent a note round to Albany saying that a bad headache kept her at home that afternoon, but that she fully appreciated the good will he had just shown and that she hoped to see him at dinner to-morrow. She knew that she could not keep Houston at arm's-length indefinitely, but if she could keep him there until, at any rate, Clare was temporarily safe she should have a breathing-space until June. Then if Tony lost the Derby, she should have to offer herself to preserve Clare; but if he won, she and Clare would both be saved.

"God!" she cried to her soul, "with me it always seems that June is to decide everything."

When the following night Houston reproached her for breaking the appointment of yesterday she reminded him that he, too, had only made promises so far; but when Houston kept his word and freed Clare until the settling day after Epsom, she still held back.

"You'll appreciate me all the more for being kept waiting."

"I've waited years," he said.

"I'll go for a drive with you to-morrow."

So it went on until the week before the Guineas.

"You're trying to fool me. You think you can get something for nothing as easily now as you could when you were at the Vanity."

"Be reasonable, my dear man," she begged. "Your money is perfectly safe. What are you risking? If Tony loses the Derby you win me the moment you put in my hands the title-deeds of Clare. If Tony wins the Derby...." She let her deep-brown eyes gaze into his.

"Kiss me," said Houston. "Kiss me once and I'll believe you."

A good lady's maid is bound to enjoy a considerable amount of intimacy in her relationship with her mistress; no lover is allowed as much. Dorothy from youth had trained her kisses to be her servants; they had always served her well, and if a degree of intimacy was unavoidable it was always the intimacy of a servant, which does not count. One of these kisses she summoned to her aid now.

Tony proposed that Lonsdale should drive them down to Newmarket for the Guineas, but Lonsdale said he was booked to fly on that day.

"You never come near us now," said Dorothy, reproachfully.

"I can't stand that fellow Houston. I can't think how you can bear him around all the time."

"He's very amusing," said Dorothy.

"So's a bishop in a bathing-dress. If you want amusement you can get plenty of it," Lonsdale growled, "without having to depend on a fellow like that."

Tufton, who was as sensitive as a tress of seaweed to the atmosphere, had also neglected his old friends recently, and Dorothy knew by his manner that people must now be talking very hard about herself and Houston.

Tony kept his promise not to bet heavily on the result of the Guineas, and Full Moon's win did not do more than keep quiet a certain number of low-class creditors who had for some time been supplying Lord and Lady Clarehaven with such trifles as wine, food, and clothes. However, the win did seem to make the Derby a certainty for the stable; Full Moon and Vanity Girl, unlike Moonbeam, had both won at Epsom as two-year-olds, and if Vanity Girl could beat Full Moon, surely no horse in England could beat her on a course to which she had already shown her partiality. When the filly did not appear in the Thousand Guineas the quidnuncs, the how-nows, and the what-nots of the turf said she had wintered disappointingly and that she would never be seen in the Oaks. There was scarcely a sporting paper that did not assure its readers that they would soon hear of Vanity Girl's having been scratched for both the Derby and the Oaks. She was a flier, but a non-stayer, and the Stewards' Cup at Goodwood was her journey.

At the same time the quidnuncs, the how-nows, and the what-nots of the turf were puzzled to find that after Full Moon's victory in the Guineas no money from Starkey Lodge seemed to be going on the colt's chances for the Derby. All the touts set hard to work to solve what was called the Starkey Lodge Puzzle; Winsley and the hamlets round were frequented by inquisitive men whose pockets were bulging with sheaves of telegraph forms.

"They think we've got something up our sleeves," said the trainer to the owner. It was half past four o'clock of a morning early in May; Tony, Dorothy, Houston, and Starkey had just taken up their positions to watch the trial that was to decide which horse should carry the Clarehaven colors a month hence. They had motored down to Winsley the night before; and under a cold sky of turquoise scattered with pearls and amethysts they had ridden up here at dawn; but when their clothing had been taken off the horses, heads had popped up like rabbits from behind every hillock along the course.

"No good running it this morning," said the trainer, shouting some abuse at the touts and galloping his hack in the direction of the horses.

The sun was now well about the rounded edge of the downs; the air of the morning was lustrous and scented with young grass upon which the dew lay like golden wine.

"You can't get up too early for these touts," Starkey told them at breakfast, "and if we want to know where we are for the Derby a bit before any one else, we'll have to run the trial by moonlight. I'll keep 'em on the hop all the day before and tire some of these Nosey Parkers into staying at home for once in their lives."

Dorothy was never sorry of an excuse to spend a few days with the horses. They had caused her so much misery; but she had no ill will when she saw them.

"Yes," said the trainer. "A moonlight trial. That's the ticket. What with Full Moon and Moonbeam you can't say it isn't highly suitable. I'm not going to pretend that Moonbeam is up to his best form. Thinking Mr. Houston was going to take him to the stud, I only began putting him into strong work a month ago. So I thought we'd run them at weights for sex, and put in a couple of good handicappers belonging to Mr. Ginsberg to make a bit of a field."

At two o'clock there was the clank of a pail in the stable-yard, followed by a low murmur of voices and the grumble of the big yard gates being cautiously opened. Presently the team emerged and walked slowly up the village street, where half a dozen touts were fast asleep, because they must be up at dawn to haunt the entrance to the Starkey Lodge Stables. By the magic of the moon the horses in their clothing were turned into the caparisoned steeds of knights-at-arms setting forth upon a romantic quest. Dorothy, Houston, Tony, and the trainer followed on hacks; and even when far out of hearing of the most vigilant tout they continued to talk in half-tones. So breathless was the night that the thundering of the hoofs coming nearer and nearer over the turf seemed to vibrate the stars, and Dorothy had a fancy that presently all the people in the little villages below the rim of the downs would wake and run with lanterns up here to know if the moon had fallen down upon the great world.

Vanity Girl won the trial; Moonbeam was second; the winner of the Guineas was third.

"Well, I hope that's decisive enough," said Tony, gleefully. "Starkey, you were right!"

He and the trainer moved off in excited conversation. Houston took Dorothy's hand, and she did not try to withdraw it from his grasp; Vanity Girl was going to win the Derby; Clare would be safe in June; she should be safe in June. The benevolent moon, quite undisturbed by all this mad nocturnal galloping, gazed blandly at Dorothy's complaisance; she would not have put a cloud up to her face for much more than that, the unscrupulous old bawd.

A week later the following paragraph appeared in one of the sporting weeklies:

THE STARKEY LODGE PUZZLE

Rumor says that the young Earl of Clarehaven, who has recently had very heavy losses on the turf, positively intends to capture the Derby this year. It was only a few months ago that we had to condole with the gallant young nobleman on the sad necessity which forced him to sell that great horse Moonbeam last year to the well-known South African capitalist, Mr. Lionel Houston, who indorsed the public view that Moonbeam's defeat in the Derby by his own horse Chimpanzee was not true form when he sold Chimpanzee to an Australian syndicate of breeders and bought Moonbeam for the stud he is now forming, and which we have no doubt will give many famous new names to the history of English racing. But our readers' present concern is what is popularly known as the Starkey Lodge Puzzle. We have the highest authority for saying that this is no longer a puzzle. At an important trial held in great secrecy on the Starkey Lodge training-grounds it was conclusively established that Vanity Girl is more than likely to give the Blue Riband of the turf to Lord Clarehaven and console him for the failure of Moonbeam. It will interest our readers from the smallest punter upward to hear that Full Moon, the victor of the Two Thousand Guineas and the present Derby favorite, will not run at Epsom, having been sold like his half-brother to Mr. Lionel Houston, who no doubt intends to keep him for the St. Leger, a race which he is ambitious of winning. We need scarcely point out to our readers the obvious tip for this year's Derby, and we do not hesitate to plump right out for Vanity Girl as the winner. We were the only paper to advise our readers not to back Full Moon until the intentions of the stable were a little plainer, and to all those who failed to follow our advice we can only say, "I told you so." Lord Clarehaven has done well to scratch the winner of the Guineas, for there is no doubt that if both the colt and his stable companion had faced the starter at Epsom the public would have followed the son of Cyllene. As it is, we confidently expect to see Vanity Girl a raging favorite before the week is out, and we may remind our readers that Lord Clarehaven's beautiful chestnut has already shown that she likes the Epsom course by winning the Woodcote Stakes last year. Her running at Newmarket last autumn may be discounted. We happened to know that the stable was coughing; as we have hinted, the gallant young nobleman who sports the black, white, and purple was very hard hit by her defeats, and this expression of renewed confidence in the chestnut daughter of Spearmint cannot be disregarded.