-there is a great deal to be said for it," replied Bertie
musingly. "You see, until one has broken one's neck, the excitement
of the thing isn't totally worn out; can't be, naturally, because
the--what-do-you-call-it?--consummation isn't attained till then. The
worst of it is, it's getting commonplace, getting vulgar; such a number
break their necks, doing Alps and that sort of thing, that we shall have
nothing at all left to ourselves soon."

"Not even the monopoly of sporting suicide! Very hard," said her
ladyship, with the lowest, most languid laugh in the world, very like
"Beauty's" own, save that it had a considerable indication of studied
affectation, of which he, however much of a dandy he was, was wholly
guiltless. "Well! you won magnificently; that little black man, who
is he? Lancers, somebody said?--ran you so fearfully close. I really
thought at one time that the Guards had lost."

"Do you suppose that a man happy enough to wear Lady Guenevere's colors
could lose? An embroidered scarf given by such hands has been a gage
of victory ever since the days of tournaments!" murmured Cecil with the
softest tenderness, but just enough laziness in the tone and laughter in
the eye to make it highly doubtful whether he was not laughing both at
her and at himself, and was wondering why the deuce a fellow had to talk
such nonsense. Yet she was Lady Guenevere, with whom he had been in love
ever since they stayed together at Belvoir for the Croxton Park week the
autumn previous; and who was beautiful enough to make their "friendship"
as enchanting as a page out of the "Decamerone." And while he bent
over her, flirting in the fashion that made him the darling of the
drawing-rooms, and looking down into her superb Velasquez eyes, he did
not know, and if he had known would have been careless of it, that
afar off, while with rage, and with his gaze straining on to the course
through his race-glass, Ben Davis, "the welsher," who had watched the
finish--watched the "Guards' Crack" landed at the distance--muttered,
with a mastiff's savage growl:

"He wins, does he? Curse him! The d----d swell--he shan't win long."

CHAPTER IV.

LOVE A LA MODE.

Life was very pleasant at Royallieu.

It lay in the Melton country, and was equally well placed for Pytchley,
Quorn, and Belvoir, besides possessing its own small but very perfect
pack of "little ladies," or the "demoiselles," as they were severally
nicknamed; the game was close