She was a tall girl and typically English—straight of back, clear of skin, and bright of eye. A great mass of chestnut hair, two arched eyebrows, and a resolute little chin made up a face of special attractiveness.
She stood almost head and shoulders above the old man at her side. Verlond had never been a beauty. Age had made his harsh lines still harsher; there was not a line in his face which did not seem as though it had been carved from solid granite, so fixed, so immovable and cold it was.
His lower jaw protruded, his eyes were deep set. He gave you the uncanny impression when you first met him that you had been longer acquainted with his jaw than with his eyes.
He snapped a greeting to Sir Isaac.
“Sit down, Ikey,” he smiled.
The girl had given the baronet the slightest of nods, and immediately turned her attention to the passing throng.
“Not riding today?” asked Sir Isaac.
“Yes,” said the peer, “I am at this moment mounted on a grey charger, leading a brigade of cavalry.”
His humour took this one form, and supplied answers to unnecessary questions.
Then suddenly his face went sour, and after a glance round to see whether the girl’s attention had been attracted elsewhere, he leant over towards Sir Isaac and, dropping his voice, said, “Ikey, you’re going to have some difficulty with her.”
“I am used to difficulties,” said Sir Isaac airily.
“Not difficulties like this,” said the earl. “Don’t be a fool, Ikey, don’t pretend you’re clever. I know—the difficulties—I have to live in the same house with her. She’s an obstinate devil—there’s no other word for it.”
Sir Isaac looked round cautiously.
“Is there anybody else?” he asked.
He saw the earl’s brows tighten, his eyes were glaring past him, and, following their direction, Sir Isaac saw the figure of a young man coming towards them with a smile that illuminated the whole of his face.
That smile was directed neither to the earl nor to his companion; it was unmistakably intended for the girl, who, with parted lips and a new light in her eyes, beckoned the newcomer forward.
Sir Isaac scowled horribly.
“The accursed cheek of the fellow,” he muttered angrily.
“Good morning,” said Horace Gresham to the earl; “taking the air?”
“No,” growled the old man, “I am bathing, I am deep-sea fishing, I am aeroplaning. Can’t you see what I am doing? I’m sitting here—at the mercy of every jackass that comes along to address his insane questions to me.”
Horace laughed. He was genuinely amused. There was just this touch of perverse humour in the old man which saved him from being absolutely repulsive.
Without further ceremony he turned to the girl.
“I expected to find you here,” he said.
“How is that great horse of yours?” she asked.
He shot a smiling glance at Tramber.
“Oh, he’ll be fit enough on the day of the race,” he said. “We shall make Timbolino gallop.”
“Mine will beat yours, wherever they finish, for a thousand,” said Sir Isaac angrily.
“I should not like to take your money,” said the young man. “I feel that it would be unfair to you, and unfair to—your friend.”
The last words were said carelessly, but Sir Isaac Tramber recognized the undertone of hostility, and read in the little pause which preceded them the suggestion that this cheery young man knew much more about his affairs than he was prepared for the moment to divulge.
“I am not concerned about my friend,” said the baronet angrily. “I merely made a fair and square sporting offer. Of course, if you do not like to accept it—” He shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, I would accept it all right,” said the other.
He turned deliberately to the girl.
“What’s Gresham getting at?” asked Verlond, with a grin at his friend’s discomfiture.
“I didn’t know he was a friend of yours,” said Sir Isaac; “where did you pick him up?”
Lord Verlond showed his yellow teeth in a grin.
“Where one picks up most of one’s undesirable acquaintances,” he said, “in the members’ enclosure. But racing is getting so damned respectable, Ikey, that a real top-notch undesirable is hard to meet.
“The last race-meeting I went to, what do you think I found? The tearoom crammed, you couldn’t get in at the doors; the bar empty. Racing is going to the dogs, Ikey.”
He was on his favourite hobby now, and Sir Isaac shifted uneasily, for the old man was difficult to divert when in the mood for reminiscent chatter.
“You can’t bet nowadays like you used to bet,” the earl went on. “I once backed a horse for five thousand pounds at 20‒1, without altering the price. Where could you do that nowadays?”
“Let us walk about a little,” said the girl.
Lord Verlond was so engrossed in his grievance against racing society that he did not observe the two young people rise and stroll away.
Sir Isaac saw them, and would have interrupted the other’s garrulity, but for the wholesome fear he had of the old man’s savage temper.
“I can’t understand,” said Horace, “how your uncle can stick that bounder.”
The girl smiled.
“Oh, he can ‘stick’ him all right,” she said dryly. “Uncle’s patience with unpleasant people is proverbial.”
“He’s not very patient with me,” said Mr. Horace Gresham.
She laughed.
“That is because you are not sufficiently unpleasant,” she said. “You have to be hateful to everybody else in the world before uncle likes you.”
“And I’m not that, am I?” he asked eagerly.
She flushed a little.
“No, I wouldn’t say you were that,” she said, glancing at him from under her eyelashes. “I am sure you are a very nice and amiable young man. You must have lots of friends. Ikey, on the other hand, has such queer friends. We saw him at the Blitz the other day, lunching with a perfectly impossible man—do you know him?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“I don’t know any perfectly impossible persons,” he said promptly.
“A Colonel Black?” she suggested.
He nodded.
“I know of him,” he replied.
“Who is this Black?” she asked.
“He
