o turf devotee, he formed distinctly unfavorable
conclusions as to the financial stability of the bawling bookmakers
near at hand.

"If you wish to do any betting, Miss Vanrenen," he said, "give me the
money and I will invest it for you. There is no hurry. The Derby will
not be run till three o'clock. We have an hour and a half in which to
study form."

For the life of him he could not imitate the complete annihilation of
self practiced by the well-bred English servant. The American girl
missed the absence of this trait far less than the other woman, but,
by this time, even Mrs. Devar began to accept Medenham's good-humored
assumption of equality as part of the day's amusement.

Cynthia handed him a card. She had bought three while they were
crawling up the hill behind a break-load of jeering Cockneys.

"What will win the first race?" she asked. "Father says you men often
hear more than the owners about the real performances of horses."

Medenham tried to look knowing. He thanked his stars for Dale's
information.

"I am told Eyot has a chance," he said.

"Well, put me a sovereign on Eyot, please. Are _you_ playing the
ponies, Mrs. Devar?"

That lady, being quick-witted, took care not to offend Cynthia by
pretending not to understand, though it set Medenham's teeth on edge
to hear a racehorse called a pony. She opened a gold purse and
produced a coin.

"I don't mind risking a little," she tittered.

Medenham found, however, that she also had handed him a sovereign, and
his conscience smote him, for he guessed already, with accuracy as it
happened, that she was Miss Vanrenen's paid chaperon during the
absence of the girl's father on the Continent.

"Personally, I am a duffer in matters connected with the turf," he
explained. "A friend of mine--a chauffeur--mentioned Eyot----"

"Oh, that is all right," laughed Cynthia. "I like the color--Eau de
Nil and white. Look! There he goes!"

She had good eyes, as well as pretty ones, else she could not have
distinguished the silk jacket worn by the rider of a horse cantering
at that moment along the cleared course. Crowded coaches, four rows
deep, lined the rails near the judge's box, and the gay-hued parasols
of their feminine occupants almost completely blocked the view, a
distant one in any case, owing to the width of the intervening
valley.

Medenham raised no further protest. He walked to a stand where a press
of people betokened the presence of a popular lay