Mr. Gunning proceeded to his room and to the packing of his portmanteau for that evening’s mail-boat to Holyhead in a mood of considerable sourness.  It may be conceded to him that circumstances had been of a souring character.  He had bought Miss Fanny Fitzroy’s grey mare at the Horse Show for reasons of an undeniably sentimental sort.  Therefore, having no good cause to show for the purchase, he had made it secretly, the sum of sixty pounds, for an animal that he had consistently crabbed, amounting in the eyes of the world in general to a rather advanced love-token, if not a formal declaration.  He had planned no future for the grey mare, but he had cherished a trembling hope that some day he might be in a position to restore her to her late owner without considering the expression in any eyes save those which, a couple of hours ago, had recalled to him the play of lights in a Connemara trout stream.

Now, it appeared, this pleasing vision must go the way of many others.

The August sunlight illumined Mr. Gunning’s folly, and his bulging portmanteau, packed as brutally as only a man in a passion can pack; when he reached the hall, it also with equal inappropriateness irradiated the short figure and seedy tidiness of the dealer who had been his confederate in the purchase of the mare.

“What did the vet say, Brennan?” said Mr. Gunning, with the brevity of ill humour.

Mr. Brennan paused before replying, a pause laden with the promise of evil tidings.  His short silvery hair glistened respectably in the sunshine:  he had preserved unblemished from some earlier phase of his career the air of a family coachman out of place.  It veiled, though it could not conceal, the dissolute twinkle in his eye as he replied:—­

“He said sir, if it wasn’t that she was something out of condition, he’d recommend you to send her out to the lions at the Zoo!”

The specimen of veterinary humour had hardly the success that had been hoped for it.  Rupert Gunning’s face was so remarkably void of appreciation that Mr. Brennan abruptly relapsed into gloom.

“He said he’d only be wasting his time with her, sir; he might as well go stitch a bog-hole as them wounds the window gave her; the tendon of the near fore is the same as in two halves with it, let alone the shoulder, that’s worse again with her pitching out on the point of it.”

“Was that all he had to say?” demanded the mare’s owner.

“Well, beyond those remarks he passed about the Zoo, I should say it was, sir,” admitted Mr. Brennan.

There was another pause, during which Rupert asked himself what the devil he was to do with the mare, and Mr. Brennan, thoroughly aware that he was doing so, decorously thumbed the brim of his hat.

“Maybe we might let her get the night, sir,” he said, after a respectful interval, “and you might see her yourself in the morning—­”

“I don’t want to see her.  I know well enough what she looks like,” interrupted his client irritably.  “Anyhow, I’m crossing to England to-night, and I don’t choose to miss the boat for the fun of looking at an unfortunate brute that’s cut half to pieces!”