“You have asked to be recalled from Warsaw?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Then,” she said, after a pause, “it would have been better for you if we had not met at Lady Orlay’s, in London.  Monsieur Deulin once said that you had never had a check in your career.  This is the first check.  And it has come through—­knowing us.”

Cartoner made no answer, but stood watching the door of the pavilion with patient, thoughtful eyes.

“You cannot deny it,” she said.

And he did not deny it.

Then she turned her head, and looked at him with clever, speculative keenness.

“Why have you asked for your recall?” she asked, slowly.

And still Cartoner made no answer.  He was without rival in the art of leaving things unsaid.  Then Martin came to them, laughing and talking.  And across the course, amid the tag-rag and bobtail of Warsaw, the eyes of the man called Kosmaroff watched their every movement.

XIII

THE WHEELS OF CHANCE

When Martin and Wanda returned to the grand-stand they found the next box to theirs, which had hitherto been empty, occupied by a sedate party of foreigners.  Miss Mangles had come to the races, not because she cared for sport, but because she had very wisely argued in her mind that one cannot set about to elevate human nature without a knowledge of those depths to which it sometimes descends.

“And this,” she said, when she had settled herself on the chair commanding the best view, “this is the turf.”

“That,” corrected Mr. Mangles, pointing down to the lawn with his umbrella, “is the turf.  This is the grand-stand.”

“The whole,” stated Miss Mangles, rather sadly, and indicating with a graceful wave of her card, which was in Russian and therefore illegible to her, the scene in general, “the whole constitutes the turf.”

Joseph P. Mangles sat corrected, and looked lugubriously at Netty, who was prettily and quietly dressed in autumnal tints, which set off her delicate and transparent complexion to perfection.  Her hair was itself of an autumnal tint, and her eyes of the deep blue of October skies.

“And these young men are on it,” concluded Miss Mangles, with her usual decision.  One privilege of her sex she had not laid aside—­the privilege of jumping to conclusions.  Netty glanced beneath her dark lashes in the direction indicated by Miss Mangles’s inexorable finger; but some of the young men happening to look up, she instantly became interested in the Russian race-card which she could not read.

“It is very sad,” she said.

Miss Mangles continued to look at the young men severely, as if making up her mind how best to take them in hand.

“Don’t see the worst of ’em here,” muttered Mr. Mangles, dismally.  “It isn’t round about the grand-stand that young men come to grief—­on the turf.  That contingent is waiting to be called up into the boxes, and reformed—­by the young women.”