the eye of another, read a letter
from Chifney, and in a few minutes afterwards offered to take the odds
against Pocket Hercules. Mr Latour walked to the window, surveyed the
heavens, sighed that there was not time to send his tiger from the door
to Epsom, and get information whether the storm had reached the Surrey
hills, for to-night's operations. It was too late. So he took a rusk and
a glass of lemonade, and retired to rest with a cool head and a cooler
heart.

The storm raged, the incessant flash played as it were round the
burnished cornice of the chamber, and threw a lurid hue on the scenes
of Watteau and Boucher that sparkled in the medallions over the lofty
doors. The thunderbolts seemed to descend in clattering confusion upon
the roof. Sometimes there was a moment of dead silence, broken only by
the pattering of the rain in the street without, or the pattering of the
dice in a chamber at hand. Then horses were backed, bets made, and there
were loud and frequent calls for brimming goblets from hurrying waiters,
distracted by the lightning and deafened by the peal. It seemed a scene
and a supper where the marble guest of Juan might have been expected,
and had he arrived, he would have found probably hearts as bold and
spirits as reckless as he encountered in Andalusia.

Book 1 Chapter 2

"Will any one do anything about Hybiscus?" sang out a gentleman in the
ring at Epsom. It was full of eager groups; round the betting post a
swarming cluster, while the magic circle itself was surrounded by a
host of horsemen shouting from their saddles the odds they were ready to
receive or give, and the names of the horses they were prepared to back
or to oppose.

"Will any one do anything about Hybiscus?"

"I'll give you five to one," said a tall, stiff Saxon peer, in a white
great coat.

"No; I'll take six."

The tall, stiff peer in the white great coat mused for a moment with his
pencil at his lip, and then said, "Well, I'll give you six. What do you
say about Mango?"

"Eleven to two against Mango," called out a little humpbacked man in a
shrill voice, but with the air of one who was master of his work.

"I should like to do a little business with you, Mr Chippendale," said
Lord Milford in a coaxing tone, "but I must have six to one."

"Eleven to two, and no mistake," said this keeper of a second-rate
gaming-house, who, known by the flattering appellation of Hump
Chippendale, now turned with malignant