I are engaged in pulling off a big
_coup_ togethah. If it were not for that, I wouldn't be heah. Yah don't
catch me going away so fah from Newmarket and the Empire for nothing.'

'I judged as much,' I answered. And then I was silent.

But I wondered to myself why the neutral-tinted young man should be so
communicative to an obviously hostile stranger.

For the next few days it amused me to see how hard our lordling tried to
suit his conversation to myself and Elsie. He was absurdly anxious to
humour us. Just at first, it is true, he had discussed the subjects that
lay nearest to his own heart. He was an ardent votary of the noble
quadruped; and he loved the turf--whose sward, we judged, he trod mainly
at Tattersall's. He spoke to us with erudition on 'two-year-old form,'
and gave us several 'safe things' for the spring handicaps. The Oaks he
considered 'a moral' for Clorinda. He also retailed certain choice
anecdotes about ladies whose Christian names were chiefly Tottie and
Flo, and whose honoured surnames have escaped my memory. Most of them
flourished, I recollect, at the Frivolity Music Hall. But when he
learned that our interest in the noble quadruped was scarcely more than
tepid, and that we had never even visited 'the Friv.,' as he
affectionately called it, he did his best in turn to acquire our
subjects. He had heard us talk about Florence, for example, and he
gathered from our talk that we loved its art treasures. So he set
himself to work to be studiously artistic. It was a beautiful study in
human ineptitude. 'Ah, yaas,' he, murmured, turning up the pale blue
eyes ecstatically towards the mast-head. 'Chawming place, Florence! I
dote on the pickchahs. I know them all by heart. I assuah yah, I've
spent houahs and houahs feeding my soul in the galleries.'

'And what particular painter does your soul most feed upon?' I asked
bluntly, with a smile.

The question staggered him. I could see him hunting through the vacant
chambers of his brain for a Florentine painter. Then a faint light
gleamed in the leaden eyes, and he fingered the straw-coloured moustache
with that nervous hand till he almost put a visible point upon it. 'Ah,
Raphael?' he said, tentatively, with an inquiring air, yet beaming at
his success. 'Don't you think so? Splendid artist, Raphael!'

'And a very safe guess,' I answered, leading him on. 'You can't go far
wrong in mentioning Raphael, can you? But after him?'

He dived into the recesses