had almost hoped, in the interval between two of his beakers of gin-and-water on the preceding evening, that he might ride the race and win it altogether during this very morning visit he was about to make, in his cooler moments he had begun to reflect that that would hardly be practicable.  The mare must get a gallop before she would be in a condition to be brought out.  So Archie knocked at the door, intending merely to give the mare a gallop if he should find her in to-day.

He gave his name, and was shown at once up into Lady Ongar’s drawing-room.  Lady Ongar was not there, but she soon came down, and entered the room with a smile on her face and with an outstretched hand.  Between the man-servant who took the captain’s name, and the maid-servant who carried it up to her mistress, but who did not see the gentleman before she did so, there had arisen some mistake; and Lady Ongar, as she came down from her chamber above, expected that she was to meet another man.  Harry Clavering, she thought, had come to her at last.  “I’ll be down at once,” Lady Ongar had said, dismissing the girl, and then standing for a moment before her mirror as she smoothed her hair, obliterated, as far as it might be possible, the ugliness of her cap, and shook out the folds of her dress.  A countess, a widow, a woman of the world who had seen enough to make her composed under all circumstances, one would say—­a trained mare, as Doodles had called her—­she stood before her glass, doubting and trembling like a girl, when she heard that Harry Clavering was waiting for her below.  We may surmise that she would have spared herself some of this trouble had she known the real name of her visitor.  Then, as she came slowly down the stairs, she reflected how she would receive him.  He had stayed away from her, and she would be cold to him—­cold and formal as she had been on the railway platform.  She knew well how to play that part.  Yes, it was his turn now to show some eagerness of friendship, if there was ever to be anything more than friendship between them.  But she changed all this as she put her hand upon the look of the door.  She would be honest to him—­honest and true.  She was, in truth, glad to see him, and he should know it.  What cared she now for the common ways of women and the usual coyness of feminine coquetry?  She told herself also, in language somewhat differing from that which Doodles had used, that her filly days were gone by, and that she was now a trained mare.  All this passed through her mind as her hand was on the door, and then she opened it, with a smiling face and ready hand, to find herself in the presence of—­Captain Archie Clavering.

The captain was sharp-sighted enough to observe the change in her manner.  The change, indeed, was visible enough, and was such that it at once knocked out of Archie’s breast some portion of the courage with which his friend’s lessons had inspired him.  The outstretched hand fell slowly to her side, the smile gave place to a look of composed dignity, which made Archie at once feel that the fate which called upon him to woo a countess was in itself hard.  And she walked slowly into the room before she spoke to him, or he to her.