“My dear Seraph, not for worlds!  You were quite right not to have a thorn taken down.  Why, that’s where I shall thrash Bay Regent,” said Bertie serenely, as if the winning of the stakes had been forecast in his horoscope.

The Seraph whistled, stroking his mustaches.  “Between ourselves, Cecil, that fellow is going up no end.  The Talent fancy him so—­”

“Let them,” said Cecil placidly, with a great cheroot in his mouth, lounging into the center of the Ring to hear how the betting went on his own mount; perfectly regardless that he would keep them waiting at the weights while he dressed.  Everybody there knew him by name and sight; and eager glances followed the tall form of the Guards’ champion as he moved through the press, in a loose brown sealskin coat, with a little strip of scarlet ribbon round his throat, nodding to this peer, taking evens with that, exchanging a whisper with a Duke, and squaring his book with a Jew.  Murmurs followed about him as if he were the horse himself—­“looks in racing form”—­“looks used up to me”—­“too little hands surely to hold in long in a spin”—­“too much length in the limbs for a light weight; bone’s always awfully heavy”—­“dark under the eye, been going too fast for training”—­“a swell all over, but rides no end,” with other innumerable contradictory phrases, according as the speaker was “on” him or against him, buzzed about him from the riff-raff of the Ring, in no way disturbing his serene equanimity.

One man, a big fellow, “’ossy” all over, with the genuine sporting cut-away coat, and a superabundance of showy necktie and bad jewelry, eyed him curiously, and slightly turned so that his back was toward Bertie, as the latter was entering a bet with another Guardsman well known on the turf, and he himself was taking long odds with little Berk Cecil, the boy having betted on his brother’s riding, as though he had the Bank of England at his back.  Indeed, save that the lad had the hereditary Royallieu instinct of extravagance, and, with a half thoughtless, half willful improvidence, piled debts and difficulties on this rather brainless and boyish head, he had much more to depend on than his elder; old Lord Royallieu doted on him, spoilt him, and denied him nothing, though himself a stern, austere, passionate man, made irascible by ill health, and, in his fits of anger, a very terrible personage indeed—­no more to be conciliated by persuasion than iron is to be bent by the hand; so terrible that even his pet dreaded him mortally, and came to Bertie to get his imprudences and peccadilloes covered from the Viscount’s sight.

Glancing round at this moment as he stood in the ring, Cecil saw the betting man with whom Berkeley was taking long odds on the race; he raised his eyebrows, and his face darkened for a second, though resuming its habitual listless serenity almost immediately.

“You remember that case of welshing after the Ebor St. Leger, Con?” he said in a low tone to the Earl of Constantia, with whom he was talking.  The Earl nodded assent; everyone had heard of it, and a very flagrant case it was.