Meanwhile the “welsher,” driven off the course by a hooting and indignant crowd, shaking the water from his clothes, with bitter oaths, and livid with a deadly passion at his exile from the harvest-field of his lawless gleanings, went his way, with a savage vow of vengeance against the “d——­d dandy,” the “Guards’ swell,” who had shown him up before the world as the scoundrel he was.

The bell was clanging and clashing passionately, as Cecil at last went down to the weights, all his friends of the Household about him, and all standing “crushers” on their champion, for their stringent esprit de corps was involved, and the Guards are never backward in putting their gold down, as all the world knows.  In the inclosure, the cynosure of devouring eyes, stood the King, with the sangfroid of a superb gentleman, amid the clamor raging round him, one delicate ear laid back now and them, but otherwise indifferent to the din; with his coat glistening like satin, the beautiful tracery of vein and muscle, like the veins of vine-leaves, standing out on the glossy, clear-carved neck that had the arch of Circassia, and his dark, antelope eyes gazing with a gentle, pensive earnestness on the shouting crowd.

His rivals, too, were beyond par in fitness and in condition, and there were magnificent animals among them.  Bay Regent was a huge raking chestnut, upward of sixteen hands, and enormously powerful, with very fine shoulders, and an all-over-like-going head; he belonged to a Colonel in the Rifles, but was to be ridden by Jimmy Delmar of the 10th Lancers, whose colors were violet with orange hoops.  Montacute’s horse, Pas de Charge, which carried all the money of the Heavy Cavalry,—­Montacute himself being in the Dragoon Guards,—­was of much the same order; a black hunter with racing-blood in his loins and withers that assured any amount of force, and no fault but that of a rather coarse head, traceable to a slur on his ’scutcheon on the distaff side from a plebeian great-grandmother, who had been a cart mare, the only stain on his otherwise faultless pedigree.  However, she had given him her massive shoulders, so that he was in some sense a gainer by her, after all.  Wild Geranium was a beautiful creature enough:  a bright bay Irish mare, with that rich red gloss that is like the glow of a horse chestnut; very perfect in shape, though a trifle light perhaps, and with not quite strength enough in neck or barrel; she would jump the fences of her own paddock half a dozen times a day for sheer amusement, and was game for anything[*].  She was entered by Cartouche of the Enniskillens, to be ridden by “Baby Grafton,” of the same corps, a feather-weight, and quite a boy, but with plenty of science in him.  These were the three favorites.  Day Star ran them close, the property of Durham Vavassour, of the Scots Greys, and to be ridden by his owner; a handsome, flea-bitten, gray sixteen-hander, with ragged hips, and action that looked a trifle string-halty, but noble shoulders, and great force in the loins and withers; the rest of the field, though unusually excellent, did not find so many “sweet voices” for them, and were not so much to be feared; each starter was, of course, much backed by his party, but the betting was tolerably even on these four—­all famous steeple-chasers—­the King at one time, and Bay Regent at another, slightly leading in the Ring.