Vivie arriving early managed to secure a fairly good seat on the Grand Stand, to which she could have recourse when the crowd on the race course became too repulsive or too dangerous.  She wished as much as possible to see all aspects of the premier race meeting.  Indeed, meeting a friend of Lady Feenix’s, a good-natured young peer who halted irresolute between four worlds—­the philosophic, the political, the philanthropic, and the sporting, she introduced herself as “David Williams”—­hoping no Bencher was within hearing—­said “Dare say you remember me?  Lady Feenix’s?  Been much abroad lately—­really feel quite strange on an English race course,” and persuaded him to take her round before the great people of the day were all assembled.  She was shown the Royal pavilion being got ready for the King and Queen, the weighing room of the jockeys, the paddock and temporary stables of the horses that were to race that day.  Here was a celebrated actress in a magnificent lace dress and a superb hat, walking up and down on the sun-burnt, trodden turf, in a devil of a temper.  Her horse—­for with her lovers’ money she kept a racing stable—­had been scratched for the race—­I really can’t tell you why, not having been able to study all the minutiae of racing. [Talking of that, how annoying it is—­or was—­when one cared about things of great moment, to take up an evening newspaper’s last edition and read in large type “Official Scratchings,” with a silly algebraic formula underneath about horses being withdrawn from some race, when you thought it was a bear fight in the Cabinet.] Vivie gathered from her guide that to-day would be rather a special Derby, because it did not often happen that a King-Emperor was there to see a horse from his own racing stables running in the classic race.

Then, thanking the pleasant soldier-peer for his information, Vivie (David Williams) left him to his duties as equerry and member of the Jockey-Club and entered the dense crowd on either side of the race course.  It reminded her just slightly of Frith’s Derby Day.  There were the gypsies, the jugglers, the acrobats, the costers with their provision barrows; the grooms and stable hands; the beggars and obvious pick-pockets; the low-down harlots—­the high-up ones were already entering the seats of the Grand Stand or sitting on the four-in-hand coaches or in the open landaulettes and Silent Knights.  But evidently the professional betting men were a new growth since the mid-nineteenth century.  They were just beginning to assemble, wiping their mouths from the oozings of the last potation; some, the aristocrats of their calling, like sporting peers in dress and appearance; others like knock-about actors on the music-hall stage.  The generality were remarkably similar to ordinary city men or to the hansom-cab drivers of twenty years ago.

In the very front of the crowd on the Grand Stand side, leaning with her elbows on the wooden rail, she descried Emily Davison.  Vivie edged and sidled through the crowd and touched her on the shoulder.  Emily looked up with a start, surprised at seeing the friendly face of a young man, till she recognized Vivie by her voice.  “Dear Emily,” said Vivie, “you look so tired.  Aren’t you over-trying your strength?  I don’t know what you have in hand, but why not postpone your action till you are quite strong again?”