im crowded round in hot
congratulation, and he drank down some Curacoa punch out of a
pocket-pistol, with his habitual soft, low, languid laugh, he had that
in his thoughts which took the flavor out of the Curacoa, and made the
sunny, cheery winter's day look very dull and gray to him. For Bertie,
sitting there while the cheers reeled round him like mad, with a
singularly handsome, reckless face, long tawny moustaches, tired blue
eyes, and a splendid length and strength of limb, knew that this was the
last day of the old times for him, and that he had sailed terribly near
the wind of--dishonor.

He had been brought to _envisager_ his position a little of late, and
had seen that it was very bad indeed--as bad as it could be. He had run
through all his own fortune from his mother, a good one enough, and owed
almost as much again in bills and one way and another. He had lost
heavily on the turf, gamed deeply, travelled with the most expensive
adventuresses of their day, startled town with all its worst crim.
cons.; had every vice under heaven, save that he drank not at all; and
now, having shot a Russian prince at Baden the August before, about
Lillah Lis, had received on the night just passed, from the Horse
Guards, a hint, which was a command, that his absence was requested from
her Majesty's Service--a mandate which, politely though inexorably
couched, would have taken a more forcible and public form but for the
respect in which his father, old Lion Winton, as he was called, was held
by the Army and the authorities. And Bertie, who for five-and-thirty
years had never thought at all, except on things that pleasured him,
and such bagatelles as _barriere_ duels abroad, delicately-spiced
intrigues, bills easily renewed, the _cru_ of wines, and the siege of
women, found himself pulled up with a rush, and face to face with
nothing less than ruin.

"I'm up a tree, Melcombe," he said to a man of his own corps that day as
he finished a great cheroot before mounting.

"Badly?"

"Well, yes. It'll be smash this time, I suppose."

"Bother! That's hard lines."

"It's rather a bore," he answered, with a little yawn, as he got into
the saddle; and that was all he ever said then or afterwards on the
matter; but he rode the Sovereign superbly over the barren wintry
grass-land, and landed him winner of the Blue Riband for all that,
though Black Care, for the first time in his life, rode behind him and
weighted the race.

Poor Be