The Tree of Knowledge Part 24

"It is I who am an idiot," said the girl, smiling at her own weakness.

"Ever since I have known you--I mean, you have grown to know me at an unfortunate time. I suppose I am a little overdone; you mayn't believe it, but I--I hardly ever lose my head like this."

"I can believe it very well," was the prompt reply. "You will be all right again in half a minute." He had turned so that their backs were towards the fatal spot; and, as if absently, he strolled back a little way down the road, her hand still on his arm. He began to speak at once, in his easy tones. "Look!" he said, "what a superb night it is! I thought I saw a sail, just going behind that tree. Ah! there it is! How bright! The moon just catches it."

"Perhaps it is the _Swan_," she answered, struggling valiantly for a natural voice. "The girls said I was to look out for it--it is going to cruise westward."

"Perhaps it is," he answered. "How phosph.o.r.escent the water is in its trail--do you see? How the little waves are full of fire!"

"'The startled little waves, that leap In fiery ringlets from their sleep,'"

she managed to quote, with a feeling of amazement that she should have re-conquered her self-possession enough to be able to speak and think at all.

Her whole heart was going out to Claud in grat.i.tude for his most delicate consideration. The whole affair had lasted but a few moments, but she had been very near a breakdown that evening--nearer than she herself knew. She had needed to say nothing--one look into her eyes had told him just what she was feeling, and instantly all his care had been to help her. She had no time to apply any of her habitual restraints to the spontaneous rush of kindness with which she was regarding him. All of a sudden she had discovered in him a delicacy of sympathy which she had never met with in his s.e.x before. He appeared to know exactly what she stood in need of.

It seemed to give her whole nature a species of electric shock; the carefully-preserved moral equilibrium was being severely strained.

"Will you come now?" he said, presently, in her ear. "I think it would be better for you afterwards if you can walk quietly past; but don't if you had rather not; we will go the other way round."

"I will walk past, please."

He turned, and walked at her side.

"I heard an anecdote of the mysterious owner of the _Swan_ the other day," said he. "I fancy it was worth repeating;" and proceeded to relate said anecdote in even tones, making it last until they stood at the gate of the farm. There he broke off abruptly.

"I have brought you home just in time to say good-night to your brother," said he, brightly.

She turned, and gave him her hand.

"Thank you with all my heart," said she. "You don't know how grateful I am. Good-night."

She was gone--her tall slim form darting into the shadow of the doorway.

Claud propped himself against the gate, slowly drew out his cigar-case and matches, and lighted up. Then he turned, and leaning both arms on the topmost rail, smoked placidly, with his eyes fixed on the vanishing white sail, and its track on the phosph.o.r.escent water. Presently he withdrew his weed from his mouth a moment, and turned to where the lights of Edge gleamed in the valley.

"Elsa Brabourne," he mused. "A pretty name: and a lovely girl she will be in a year or two. Even if her brother allows her nothing, she will have more than two hundred pounds a year of her own, and the Misses Willoughby are sure to leave her every penny they possess. A younger son might do worse."

CHAPTER XVII.

And he came back the pertest little ape That ever affronted human shape:

And chief in the chase his neck he perilled On a lathy horse, all legs and length, With blood for bone, all speed, no strength.

_The Flight of the d.u.c.h.ess._

"Colonel Wynch-Frere? Glad to see you, sir! Fine day for the wind-up, isn't it? Never seen Ascot so full on a Friday in my life! Everybody's here. Seen my wife, by chance?"

"Yes, a minute ago: in Mrs. Learmorth's box. I've got a little bet on with her about this event," answered the gentleman addressed, tapping his little book with a gold pencil-case, and smiling.

It was the lawn at Ascot: and it was brilliantly thronged, for the rain, which had emptied itself in bucketfuls on Cup day, had at last relented, and allowed the sun to burst forth with warmth and brightness for the running of the Hardwicke Stakes.

"Ah! I don't know when I have been so excited over a race in my life,"

said the first speaker. "I'm of the opinion that Invincible is going to the wall at last. Carter's on Castilian, you know, and he's going to ride to win."

"Can't do it," said the colonel, shortly.

"_Can't he?_"

"No. He'll try all he knows, but Invincible is--Invincible, you know."

"I know he has been hitherto; but he's never met Castilian in a short distance; I say all that bone will tell. I'll give you two to one on it."

The bet was accepted, and Frederick Orton nodded to himself in a confident way, which also made his companion anxious, for he knew his was an opinion not to be despised.

"Haven't seen my young nephew, have you?" asked Orton, as he made a memorandum in his book.

"Not that I know of. What nephew?"

"My young limb of Satan--confound him!" said Orton, with a laugh. "He's made his book as carefully as if he had been fifty years old. I've fetched him twice out of the ring by the scruff of his neck to-day; but Letherby, my old groom, is with him, so I suppose he's all right."

"He's beginning early," observed Colonel the Honorable Edward Wynch-Frere, in his slow way.

"He is. What do you think? He wants to ride Welsh Rabbit for the Canfield Cup. What do you think, eh? Should you let him do it?"

The colonel meditated for some moments.

"Is he strong enough in the wrists? That's where I should doubt him," he said, reflectively. "He rode splendidly at those private races of yours at Fallowmead; but then he knew his ground as well as his horse; he'd have to carry weight at Canfield."

"Of course. But Letherby says he could do it. The only thing is the risk of a bad throw. These things are done in a minute, you know; and he's heir to a big property. It's been well nursed, and, if anything happened to the poor little beggar, plenty of people would be kind enough to say----"

"I rode in a steeple-chase when I was sixteen," observed Colonel Wynch-Frere.

In fact, he looked more like a stud-groom than anything else you could fancy. No wonder; he had but two ideas in the world: one was horse-racing, the other was his wife. It seemed, on the whole, rather a pity that Lady Mabel's very wide range of sympathies should include neither horse-racing nor her husband. It was purgatory for her to go and stay at the house of Lord Folinsby, his father, the great Yorkshire earl, where the riding-school was the centre of attraction to all her brothers and sisters-in-law, and where the young men seemed always in training for some race or another, cut their whiskers like grooms, walked bandy-legged, and talked of the stables. Thus, the colonel indulged in his horse-racing and his wife separately; and endeavored, with all the force of his kind heart and limited intellect, not to talk of the first when in the presence of the second.

But to-day every faculty he had was centred on the question as to whether or not the duke's marvellous chestnut, Invincible, would have to lay down his laurels; and he moved along by Mr. Orton's side talking quite volubly, for him, on the all-engrossing theme, and the reports as to who was likely to drop money over the race.

Be it stated that he was eminently a racing, not a betting man; he was no gambler, though always ready to back his own opinion.

The grand stand was packed, and the ladies' dresses as brilliant as the June sky.

The two men, moving slowly on, at last caught the eyes of two ladies who were beckoning them, and accordingly went up and joined them.

"You are only just in time--they have cleared the course," said Mrs.

Learmorth, a lady sparkling in diamonds but deficient in grammar.