awworm I believe him to be.

"Well, that would be an improvement. Then there's Master Syd. That
young dog's gammoning his aunt shamefully, I'm sure. But it's all her
own fault. She treats him as if he were a child instead of a lad of
eighteen and it isn't natural for a boy to be dragged into these parish
meetings, and to be set to read reports of this society and that
society, and checked in his natural desire for a bit of honest, manly
sport. Why, if that boy could have had his way he'd have been at the
races to-day. Going fishing, I suppose. Well, that's not so bad, but I
almost wonder he's allowed to do that.

"Hang it all!" he muttered, springing up and going to the window, where
he looked out, and carefully cut and lit a cigar, to begin smoking, so
that the fumes should pass out into the air, "how that money does keep
buzzing in my head. My pulses are going like fun. Ah! there, I won't
think about it. La Sylphide is safe to pull it off for us. Do Granton
good, too. Make him more independent over his suit with the widow. Ha!
There's nothing like a good cigar to pull a man round. I'm better
already; but it's miserable work, this having to steal a smoke in one's
own house. I feel quite a coward over it, or like a boy learning. Like
Syd did when I caught him having a weed in the stables. One of mine,
too! He confessed to helping himself to one out of that box in the
study cupboard.

"Well, I wasn't very hard on him. Boys will be boys, and they pay
pretty dearly for their first smoke.

"Yes, I feel ever so much calmer now. My word! How I should have liked
to have the dogcart out and drive Laury tandem to the racecourse! She
wouldn't have enjoyed it? Well, the boy, then, to see the Sylph win,
and dropped in afterwards at the Arms. Had a chat with old Sam's pretty
little lassie. Good idea that of his, to name the little thing after
the mare. How proud he is of her, and how proud he was, too, of the
mare. Well, no wonder; it was a splendid bit of training. But hang him
for an old fox! As big an old scoundrel as ever had a horse pulled in a
race. Shocking old ruffian! Wonder what he's doing on the cup race; on
heavily with La Sylphide, of course, and no wonder, for she is sure to
win."

As he said these words Sir Hilton was sitting on the window-sill sending
out his smoke in good, steady, regular puffs, perfectly unconscious of
all sounds without and of everything but his own thoughts, ti