id neither; he lied partially, timorously,
and with that clinging to the skirts of the truth that marks the novice.

"Oh, she was all right," he said, his face purpling heavily in the
kindly darkness. "What was the polo like, Carteret?"

"But I had no idea that you had bought a horse!" broke in Fanny Fitz, in
high excitement. "Why didn't you tell Maudie and me? What is it like?"

"Oh, it's--she's just a cob--a grey cob--I just picked her up at the end
of the show."

"What sort of a cob? Can she jump? Are you going to ride her with
Freddy's hounds?" continued the implacably interested Fanny.

"I bought her as--as a trapper, and to do a bit of carting," replied
Rupert, beginning suddenly to feel his powers of invention awakening;
"she's quite a common brute. She doesn't jump."

"She seems to have jumped pretty well in Nassau Street," remarked
Captain Carteret; "as well as I could see in the crowd, she didn't
strike me as if she'd take kindly to carting."

"Well, I do think you might have told us about it!" reiterated Fanny
Fitz. "Men are so ridiculously mysterious about buying or selling
horses. I simply named my price and got it. _I_ see nothing to make a
mystery about in a deal; do you, Captain Carteret?"

"Well, that depends on whether you are buying or selling," replied
Captain Carteret.

But Fate, in the shape of a turning tide and a consequent roll, played
for once into the hands of Rupert Gunning. The boat swayed slowly, but
deeply, and a waft of steam blew across Miss Fitzroy's face. It was not
mere steam; it had been among hot oily things, stealing and giving
odour. Fanny Fitz was not ill, but she knew that she had her limits, and
that conversation, save of the usual rudimentary kind with the
stewardess, were best abandoned.

Miss Fitzroy's movements during the next two and a half months need not
be particularly recorded. They included--

1. A week in London, during which the sixty pounds, or a great part of
it, acquired by the sale of the Connemara mare, passed imperceptibly
into items, none of which, on a strict survey of expenditure, appeared
to exceed three shillings and nine pence.

2. A month at Southsea, with Rupert Gunning's sister, Maudie Spicer,
where she again encountered Captain Carteret, and entered aimlessly upon
a semi-platonic and wholly unprofitable flirtation with him. During this
epoch she wore out the remnant of her summer clothes and laid in
substitutes; rather encouraged than o