Danby's mare Petrilla won,--with
eighteen to one 'given and taken' against her, the day of the
race,--Brown Davy, the favorite, coming in a bad third,--he died the
same night."

"Was he 'nobbled'?" asked Lizzy, dryly.

"What do you mean?" cried Grog, gruffly. "Where did you learn that
word?"

"Oh, I'm quite strong in your choice vocabulary," said she, laughingly;
"and you are not to fancy that in the dissipations of Aix I have
forgotten the cares of my education. My guardian there set me a task
every morning,--a page of Burke's Peerage and a column of the 'Racing
Calendar;' and for the ninth Baron of Fitzfoodle, or the fifteenth
winner of the Diddlesworth, you may call on me at a moment."

The angry shadow on Davis's brow gradually faded away, and he laughed a
real, honest, and good-humored laugh.

"What do you say to the Count, Lizzy?" asked he next. "There was a fine
gentleman, wasn't he?"

"There was the ease and the self-possession of good breeding without the
manners. He was amusing from his own self-content, and a sort of latent
impression that he was taking you in, and when one got tired of that, he
became downright stupid."

"True as a book, every word of it!" cried Beecher, in hearty gratitude,
for he detested the man, and was envious of his small accomplishments.

"His little caressing ways, too, ceased to be flatteries, when you saw
that, like the cheap bonbons scattered at a carnival, they were made for
the million."

"Hit him again, he has n't got no friends!" said Beecher, with an
assumed slang in his tone.

"But worst of all was that mockery of good nature,--a false air of
kindliness about him. It was a spurious coinage, so cleverly devised
that you looked at every good guinea afterwards with distrust."

"How she knows him,--how she reads him!" cried Davis, in delight.

"He was very large print, papa," said she, smiling.

"Confound me!" cried Beecher, "if I didn't think you liked him, you used
to receive him so graciously; and I'll wager he thinks himself a prime
favorite with you."

"So he may, if it give him any pleasure," said she, with a careless
laugh.

Davis marked the expression of Beecher's face as she said these words;
he saw how that distrustful nature was alarmed, and he hastened to
repair the mischief.

"I am sure you never affected to feel any regard for him, Lizzy?" said
Davis.

"Regard for him!" said she, haughtily; "I should think not! Such people
as he are like the