“Lady Mabel Grex? Yes;—I know her.”
“Is there any objection?”
“Is she not your senior?”
“No, sir; no; she is younger than I am.”
“Her father is not a man I esteem.”
“But she has always been so good!” Then the Duke was again silent. “Have you not heard that, sir?”
“I think I have.”
“Is not that a great deal?”
“A very great deal. To be good must of all qualities be the best. She is very beautiful.”
“I think so, sir. Of course she has no money.”
“It is not needed. It is not needed. I have no objection to make. If you are sure of your own mind—”
“I am quite sure of that, sir.”
“Then I will raise no objection. Lady Mabel Grex! Her father, I fear, is not a worthy man. I hear that he is a gambler.”
“He is so poor!”
“That makes it worse, Silverbridge. A man who gambles because he has money that he can afford to lose is, to my thinking, a fool. But he who gambles because he has none, is—well, let us hope the best of him. You may give her my love.”
“She has not accepted me.”
“But should she do so, you may.”
“She almost rejected me. But I am not sure that she was in earnest, and I mean to try again.” Just at that moment the door was opened and Major Tifto walked into the room.
XXVII
Major Tifto and the Duke
“I beg your pardon, Silverbridge,” said the Major, entering the room, “but I was looking for Longstaff.”
“He isn’t here,” said Silverbridge, who did not wish to be interrupted by his racing friend.
“Your father, I believe?” said Tifto. He was red in the face but was in other respects perhaps improved in appearance by his liquor. In his more sober moments he was not always able to assume that appearance of equality with his companions which it was the ambition of his soul to achieve. But a second glass of whisky-and-water would always enable him to cock his tail and bark before the company with all the courage of my lady’s pug. “Would you do me the great honour to introduce me to his Grace?”
Silverbridge was not prone to turn his back upon a friend because he was low in the world. He had begun to understand that he had made a mistake by connecting himself with the Major, but at the club he always defended his partner. Though he not unfrequently found himself obliged to snub the Major himself, he always countenanced the little Master of Hounds, and was true to his own idea of “standing to a fellow.” Nevertheless he did not wish to introduce his friend to his father. The Duke saw it all at a glance, and felt that the introduction should be made. “Perhaps,” said he, getting up from his chair, “this is Major Tifto.”
“Yes;—my Lord Duke. I am Major Tifto.”
The Duke bowed graciously.
“My father and I were engaged about private matters,” said Silverbridge.
“I beg ten thousand pardons,” exclaimed the Major. “I did not intend to intrude.”
“I think we had done,” said the Duke. “Pray sit down, Major Tifto.” The Major sat down. “Though now I bethink myself, I have to beg your pardon;—that I a stranger should ask you to sit down in your own club.”
“Don’t mention it, my Lord Duke.”
“I am so unused to clubs, that I forgot where I was.”
“Quite so, my Lord Duke. I hope you think that Silverbridge is looking well?”
“Yes;—yes. I think so.”
Silverbridge bit his lips and turned his face away to the door.
“We didn’t make a very good thing of our Derby nag the other day. Perhaps your Grace has heard all that?”
“I did hear that the horse in which you are both interested had failed to win the race.”
“Yes, he did. The Prime Minister, we call him, your Grace—out of compliment to a certain Ministry which I wish it was going on today instead of the seedy lot we’ve got in. I think, my Lord Duke, that anyone you may ask will tell you that I know what running is. Well;—I can assure you—your Grace, that is—that since I’ve seen ’orses I’ve never seen a ’orse fitter than him. When he got his canter that morning, it was nearly even betting. Not that I or Silverbridge were fools enough to put on anything at that rate. But I never saw a ’orse so bad ridden. I don’t mean to say anything, my Lord Duke, against the man. But if that fellow hadn’t been squared, or else wasn’t drunk, or else wasn’t off his head, that ’orse must have won—my Lord Duke.”
“I do not know anything about racing, Major Tifto.”
“I suppose not, your Grace. But as I and Silverbridge are together in this matter I thought I’d just let your Grace know that we ought to have had a very good thing. I thought that perhaps your Grace might like to know that.”
“Tifto, you are making an ass of yourself,” said Silverbridge.
“Making an ass of myself!” exclaimed the Major.
“Yes;—considerably.”
“I think you are a little hard upon your friend,” said the Duke, with an attempt at a laugh. “It is not to be supposed that he should know how utterly indifferent I am to everything connected with the turf.”
“I thought, my Lord Duke, you might care about learning how Silverbridge was going on.” This the poor little man said almost with a whine. His partner’s roughness had knocked out of him nearly all the courage which Bacchus had given him.
“So I do; anything that interests him, interests me. But perhaps of all his pursuits racing is the one to which I am least able to lend an attentive ear. That every horse has a head, and that all did have
