HOW is your Grace’s horse, Sans-pareil?’ asked Sir Chetwode Chetwode of Chetwode of the Duke of St. James, shooting at the same time a sly glance at his opposite neighbour, Sir Tichborne Tichborne of Tichborne.

‘Quite well, sir,’ said the Duke in his quietest tone, but with an air which, he flattered himself, might repress further inquiry.

‘Has he got over his fatigue?’ pursued the dogged Baronet, with a short, gritty laugh, that sounded like a loose drag-chain dangling against the stones. ‘We all thought the Yorkshire air would not agree with him.’

‘Yet, Sir Chetwode, that could hardly be your opinion of Sanspareil,’ said Miss Dacre, ‘for I think, if I remember right, I had the pleasure of making you encourage our glove manufactory.’

Sir Chetwode looked a little confused. The Duke of St. James, inspirited by his fair ally, rallied, and hoped Sir Chetwode did not back his steed to a fatal extent. ‘If,’ continued he, ‘I had had the slightest idea that any friend of Miss Dacre was indulging in such an indiscretion, I certainly would have interfered, and have let him known that the horse was not to win.’

‘Is that a fact?’ asked Sir Tichborne Tichborne of Tichborne, with a sturdy voice.

‘Can a Yorkshireman doubt it?’ rejoined the Duke. ‘Was it possible for anyone but a mere Newmarket dandy to have entertained for a moment the supposition that anyone but May Dacre should be the Queen of the St. Leger?’

‘I have heard something of this before,’ said Sir Tichborne, ‘but I did not believe it. A young friend of mine consulted me upon the subject. “Would you advise me,” said he, “to settle?” “Why,” said I, “if you can prove any bubble, my opinion is, don’t; but if you cannot prove anything, my opinion is, do.”’

‘Very just! very true!’ were murmured by many in the neighbourhood of the oracle; by no one with more personal sincerity than Lady Tichborne herself.

‘I will write to my young friend,’ continued the Baronet.

‘Oh, no!’ said Miss Dacre. ‘His Grace’s candour must not be abused. I have no idea of being robbed of my well-earned honours. Sir Tichborne, private conversation must be respected, and the sanctity of domestic life must not be profaned. If the tactics of Doncaster are no longer to be fair war, why, half the families in the Riding will be ruined!’

‘Still,’— said Sir Tichborne.

But Mr. Dacre, like a deity in a Trojan battle, interposed, and asked his opinion of a keeper.

‘I hope you are a sportsman,’ said Miss Dacre to the Duke, ‘for this is the palace of Nimrod!’

‘I have hunted; it was not very disagreeable. I sometimes shoot; it is not very stupid.’

‘Then, in fact, I perceive that you are a heretic. Lord Faulconcourt, his Grace is moralising on the barbarity of the chase.’

‘Then he has never had the pleasure of hunting in company with Miss Dacre.’

‘Do you indeed follow the hounds?’ asked the Duke.

‘Sometimes do worse, ride over them; but Lord Faulconcourt is fast emancipating me from the trammels of my frippery foreign education, and I have no doubt that, in another season, I shall fling off quite in style.’

‘You remember Mr. Annesley?’ asked the Duke.

‘It is difficult to forget him. He always seemed to me to think that the world was made on purpose for him to have the pleasure of “cutting” it.’

‘Yet he was your admirer!’

‘Yes, and once paid me a compliment. He told me it was the only one that he had ever uttered.’

‘Oh, Charley, Charley! this is excellent. We shall have a tale when we meet. What was the compliment?’

‘It would be affectation in me to pretend that I have forgotten it. Nevertheless, you must excuse me.’

‘Pray, pray let me have it!’

‘Perhaps you will not like it?’

‘Now, I must hear it.’

‘Well then, he said that talking to me was the only thing that consoled him for having to dine with you and to dance with Lady Shropshire.&rsquo............