Despite Comyn’s most unselfish optimism, I could see no light.  And in the recklessness that so often besets youngsters of my temper, on like occasions, I went off to Newmarket next day with Mr. Fox and Lord Ossory, in his Lordship’s travelling-chaise and four.  I spent a very gay week trying to forget Miss Dolly.  I was the loser by some three hundred pounds, in addition to what I expended and loaned to Mr. Fox.  This young gentleman was then beginning to accumulate at Newmarket a most execrable stud.  He lost prodigiously, but seemed in no wise disturbed thereby.  I have never known a man who took his ill-luck with such a stoical nonchalance.  Not so while the heat was on.  As I write, a most ridiculous recollection rises of Charles dragging his Lordship and me and all who were with him to that part of the course where the race was highest, where he would act like a madman; blowing and perspiring, and whipping and swearing all at a time, and rising up and down as if the horse was throwing him.

At Newmarket I had the good—­or ill-fortune to meet that incorrigible rake and profligate, my Lord of March and Ruglen.  For him the goddess of Chance had smiled, and he was in the most complaisant humour.  I was presented to his Grace, the Duke of Grafton, whose name I had no reason to love, and invited to Wakefield Lodge.  We went instead, Mr. Fox and I, to Ampthill, Lord Ossory’s seat, with a merry troop.  And then we had more racing; and whist and quinze and pharaoh and hazard, until I was obliged to write another draft upon Mr. Dix to settle the wails:  and picquet in the travelling-chaise all the way to London.  Dining at Brooks’s, we encountered Fitzpatrick and Comyn and my Lord Carlisle.

“Now how much has Charles borrowed of you, Mr. Carvel?” demanded Fitzpatrick, as we took our seats.

“I’ll lay ten guineas that Charles has him mortgaged this day month, though he owns as much land as William Penn, and is as rich as Fordyce.”

Comyn demanded where the devil I had been, though he knew perfectly.  He was uncommonly silent during dinner, and then asked me if I had heard the news.  I told him I had heard none.  He took me by the sleeve, to the quiet amusement of the company, and led me aside.

“Curse you, Richard,” says be; “you have put me in such a temper that I vow I’ll fling you over.  You profess to love her, and yet you go betting to Newmarket and carousing to Ampthill when she is ill.”

“Ill!” I said, catching my breath.

“Ay!  That hurts, does it?  Yes, ill, I say.  She was missed at Lady Pembroke’s that Friday you had the scene with her, and at Lady Ailesbury’s on Saturday.  On Monday morning, when I come to you for tidings, you are off watching Charles make an ass of himself at Newmarket.”

“And how is she now, Comyn?” I asked, catching him by the arm.

“You may go yourself and see, and be cursed, Richard Carvel.  She is in trouble, and you are pleasure-seeking in the country.  Damme! you deserve richly to lose her.”