t haste, as the dumb things have ever been since creation began.

Cecil passed them as rapidly as he could for one so well received by
them, and made his way to the center of the Stand, to the same spot at
which he had glanced when he had drunk the Moselle.

A lady turned to him; she looked like a rose camellia in her floating
scarlet and white, just toned down and made perfect by a shower of
Spanish lace; a beautiful brunette, dashing, yet delicate; a little
fast, yet intensely thoroughbred; a coquette who would smoke a
cigarette, yet a peeress who would never lose her dignity.

"Au coeur vaillant rien d'impossible!" she said, with an envoi of her
lorgnon, and a smile that should have intoxicated him--a smile that
might have rewarded a Richepanse for a Hohenlinden. "Superbly ridden! I
absolutely trembled for you as you lifted the King to that last leap. It
was terrible!"

It was terrible; and a woman, to say nothing of a woman who was in
love with him, might well have felt a heart-sick fear at sight of that
yawning water, and those towering walls of blackthorn, where one touch
of the hoofs on the topmost bough, one spring too short of the gathered
limbs, must have been death to both horse and rider. But, as she said
it, she was smiling, radiant, full of easy calm and racing interest, as
became her ladyship who had had "bets at even" before now on Goodwood
fillies, and could lead the first flight over the Belvoir and the Quorn
countries. It was possible that her ladyship was too thoroughbred not
to see a man killed over the oak-rails without deviating into unseemly
emotion, or being capable of such bad style as to be agitated.

Bertie, however, in answer, threw the tenderest eloquence into his eyes;
very learned in such eloquence.

"If I could not have been victorious while you looked on, I would at
least not have lived to meet you here!"

She laughed a little, so did he; they were used to exchange these
passages in an admirably artistic masquerade, but it was always a little
droll to each of them to see the other wear the domino of sentiment, and
neither had much credence in the other.

"What a preux chevalier!" cried his Queen of Beauty. "You would have
died in a ditch out of homage to me. Who shall say that chivalry is
past! Tell me, Bertie; is it very delightful, that desperate effort to
break your neck? It looks pleasant, to judge by its effects. It is the
only thing in the world that amuses you!"

"Well-