“Poor Beauty,” said the Dauphin, “he’d have enjoyed that.  He always put down Pulteney himself.  I remember his telling me he was on duty at Windsor once when Pulteney was staying there.  Pulteney’s always horribly funked at Court; frightened out of his life when he dines with any royalties; makes an awful figure too in a public ceremony; can’t walk backward for any money, and at his first levee tumbled down right in the Queen’s face.  Now at the Castle one night he just happened to come down a corridor as Beauty was smoking.  Beauty made believe to take him for a servant, took out a sovereign, and tossed it to him.  ’Here, keep a still tongue about my cigar, my good fellow!’ Pulteney turned hot and cold, and stammered out God knows what, about his mighty dignity being mistaken for a valet.  Bertie just laughed a little, ever so softly, ’Beg your pardon—­thought you were one of the people; wouldn’t have done it for worlds; I know you’re never at ease with a sovereign!’ Now Pulteney wasn’t likely to forget that.  If he wanted the King, I’ll lay any money it was to give him to some wretched mount who’d break his back over a fence in a selling race.”

“Well, he won’t have him; Seraph don’t intend to have the horse ever ridden or hunted at all.”

“Nonsense!”

“By Jove, he means it! nobody’s to cross the King’s back; he wants weight-carriers himself, you know, and precious strong ones too.  The King’s put in stud at Lyonnesse.  Poor Bertie!  Nobody ever managed a close finish as he did at the Grand National—­last but two—­don’t you remember?”

“Yes; waited so beautifully on Fly-by-Night, and shot by him like lightning, just before the run-in.  Pity he went to the bad!”

“Ah, what a hand he played at ecarte; the very best of the French science.”

“But reckless at whist; a wild game there—­uncommonly wild.  Drove Cis Delareux half mad one night at Royallieu with the way he threw his trumps out.  Old Cis dashed his cards down at last, and looked him full in the face.  ’Beauty, do you know, or do you not know, that a whist-table is not to be taken as you take a timber in a hunting-field, on the principle of clear it or smash it?’ ‘Faith!’ said Bertie, ’clear it or smash it is a very good rule for anything, but a trifle too energetic for me.’”

“The deuce, he’s had enough of ‘smashing’ at last!  I wish he hadn’t come to grief in that style; it’s a shocking bore for the Guards—­such an ugly story.”

“It was uncommonly like him to get killed just when he did—­best possible taste.”

“Only thing he could do.”

“Better taste would have been to do it earlier.  I always wondered he stopped for the row.”

“Oh, never thought it would turn up; trusted to a fluke.”

He whom the Punjaub knew as the Sword of the Evil One, but who held in polite society the title of Lord Kergenven, drank some hock slowly, and murmured as his sole quota to the conversation, very lazily and languidly: