“Well?” he said gruffly, without attempting to change his position.

“Short, and not polite!” retorted Jasper, shaking him again.  “Didn’t I tell you I’d come here to-day, you imp of darkness?”

“You did, guv’nor,” the man replied sullenly.

“Well, here I am.  You’re not drunk, are you?  Here—­let’s look at you.”  With a cruel smile, the soft, amiable Mr. Vermont seized the ear of the dwarfed jockey and dragged him to the light.  “No, not drunk—­for a wonder.  Well, you know what to do to-morrow?”

The man nodded sulkily.

“Tighten and choke off at the last hurdle.  Mind you do it neatly, too.  You can do it, I know; and it won’t be the first little affair you’ve sold, eh?  You sold one too many, though, when you crossed my path, and you know what will happen if you fail me.”

“All right,” the jockey muttered hoarsely.

“I hope it will be all right,” said his persecutor, shaking him gently to and fro by the ear.  “If not, you’ll find yourself in the care of a paternal Government—­I tell you—­picking oakum.”

The man gave a sudden jerk and released himself from the cruel grasp; then he looked up almost piteously.

“Must we do it, guv’nor?” he said hoarsely.  “I’ve seen ’im——­”

“Him! whom, you idiot?”

“Him—­Mr. Leroy—­as we’re to sell.”

“You’re to sell, you mean, you gallows-bird,” returned Jasper.

The man eyed him viciously.

“Yus,” he growled, “you think you’re going to git off scot-free, don’t yer?  What if I don’t do it?  He giv’ me a tenner, he did.  ’E’s a real gent.  What if I don’t do it?” he repeated.

Mr. Vermont’s eyes narrowed till he looked like a snake about to strike.  Raising the riding-whip which he had in his hand, he seized the wretched creature once more, and brought the whip down again and again on his almost skeleton body.

“Play me false, you hound, and I’ll kill you,” he almost hissed; and, half beside himself with pain and rage, the jockey gasped brokenly: 

“Stop! stop!  I’ll do it.”

It was just five o’clock when Lady Constance and Leroy returned from their ride.  During the course of it Adrien had realised something of his cousin’s beauty of character, as well as of face.  Until that day he had only regarded her as a younger sister, pretty, perhaps, in a quiet, retiring way, but nothing more.  Now, as he lifted her down from the saddle, he could have bent and reverently kissed the little foot that lodged so lightly in the stirrup.

Woman-like, she was quick to notice the change in him, and her heart beat high with hope.

“He will love me yet,” she whispered to herself triumphantly, as, with outward calmness, she bade him au revoir till they should meet at dinner.

Adrien went straight to his own rooms.  An unusual restlessness was upon him, and his pulses throbbed wildly, but as yet he did not understand what these things meant.  He, who had played the lover so lightly all his life, did not realise that it was now his turn to feel Cupid’s dart, and that he was becoming as deeply enamoured of his pretty cousin as any raw boy straight from college.