suavity. "She's
sold."

Adrien looked up in surprise.

"Sold! To whom?" he asked.

"To the knacker," was the calm reply. "Don't you remember, Adrien, that
she threw Fording and broke her leg over the last hurdle?"

Leroy's race resumed its usual air of bored indifference.

"Ah, yes, so you told me. My dear Stan, I'm awfully sorry! I had
completely forgotten." He looked round the table. "Any of you seen the
papers?" he inquired. "Last night was the first of the new comedy at the
Casket--how did it go?"

Frank Parselle laughed. "I was there," he admitted. "Ada played finely,
but they hissed once or twice."

"Lost on my horse and on my new play. That is bad luck!" exclaimed
Adrien, looking, however, very little disturbed by the news. "It must be
withdrawn."

"Certainly," agreed Vermont amiably. "Certainly."

"By Jove! what did you tell me the mounting cost?" asked Parselle,
addressing Vermont, but glancing significantly at the others.

"Three thousand pounds," answered Vermont glibly, while Adrien ate his
fish with the most consummate indifference.

"Three thousand for four nights, that's about it. The public ought to be
grateful to you," said Shelton with a tinge of sarcasm in his voice, as
he nodded across at Leroy.

Adrien laughed.

"Or I to them," he said cheerfully. "It's no light thing to sit through
a bad play. But how is that, Jasper? You said it would run."

"I?" protested Vermont, with a pleasant smile. "No, Adrien, not so
certainly as that. I said I thought the play well written, and that in
my opinion it ought to run well--a very different thing. Eh, Shelton?"

"Ah!" replied Shelton, who had been watching him keenly. "So you were
out in your reckoning for once. It is to be hoped you didn't make the
same mistake with the colt. I think you were also favourably inclined to
that, weren't you?"

"Yes," admitted Vermont, leaning back with an admirable air of content.
"I laid my usual little bet, and lost--of course."

"You should have hedged," said Shelton, who knew as a positive fact that
Vermont had done so.

"I have no judgement," Vermont responded deprecatingly. "I am a man of
no ideas, and I admit it. Now Adrien is all acuteness; without him I
should soon go astray. I am supposed to look after his interests; but,
by Jove! it is he who supplies the brains and I the hands. I am the
machine--a mere machine, and he turns the handle!" He laughed gently at
his own joke, and held up his glass f