tle matter!" said Fox. "Come, get you perfumed and dressed,
and order up some of your Tokay while we wait. I have to go to St.
Stephens. Mr. Carvel has come to buy your horse Pollux. He has bet
Chartersea two hundred guineas he rides him for twenty minutes."

"The devil he has!" cried his Lordship, jaded no longer. "Why, you must
know, Mr. Carvel, there was no groom in my stables who would sit him
until Foley made me a present of his man, Miller, who started to ride
him to Hyde Park. As he came out of Great Russell Street, by gads life!
the horse broke and ran out the Tottenham Court Road all the way to
Hampstead. And the fiend picked out a big stone water trough and tossed
Miller against it. Then they gathered up the fragments. Damme if I like
to see suicide, Mr. Carvel. If Chartersea wants to kill you, let him try
it in the fields behind Montagu House here."

I told his Lordship that I had made the wager, and could not in honour
withdraw, though the horse had killed a dozen grooms. But already he
seemed to have lost interest. He gave a languid pull at the velvet
tassel on his bell-rope, ordered the wine; and, being informed that
his anteroom below was full of people, had them all dismissed with the
message that he was engaged upon important affairs. He told Mr. Fox
he had heard of the Jerusalem Chamber, and vowed he would have a like
institution. He told me he wished the colony of Maryland in hell; that
he was worn out with the quarrels of Governor Eden and his Assembly, and
offered to lay a guinea that the Governor's agent would get to him that
day,--will-he, nill-he. I did not think it worth while to argue with
such a man.

My Lord took three-quarters of an hour to dress, and swore he had not
accomplished the feat so quickly in a year. He washed his hands and face
in a silver basin, and the scent of the soap filled the room. He rated
his Swiss for putting cinnamon upon his ruffles in place of attar of
roses, and attempted to regale us the while with some of his choicest
adventures. In more than one of these, by the way, his Grace of
Chartersea figured. It was Fox who brought him up.

"See here, Baltimore," he said, "I'm not squeamish. But I'm cursed if I
like to hear a man who may die any time between bottles talk so."

His Lordship took the rebuke with an oath, and presently hobbled down
the stairs of the great and silent house to the stable court, where
two grooms were in waiting with the horse. He was an anim