?"

The youngster eyed the elder man with disapproval.

"Name--coming brain specialist--setting the old fossils in Harley Street
by the ears--forgotten more than they've ever learned--name--why, Jan
Cuxson. Won't you come, Lady Hickle?"

Leonie had suddenly bent to adjust her stirrup leather.

Her face was dead white, her eyes like stars, her mouth like a gate to
heaven.

Almost a year and not a word, not a sign!

Tortured by doubt, racked with love, she had gone her way silently;
blaming herself one moment for the ease with which she had shown her
love; staking her all the next on the honesty of the man who had kissed
her hand in forgiveness in the old Devon church.

Making excuses, heaping the blame upon herself, wearying, wondering--and
now!

She lifted her face, which shone like the Taj at noon, and the worshipful
company of men looked at her, almost stunned by its incomprehensible
radiance.

"Yes," she said softly, without thought of the Devil's nerve-storm.
"Yes, I will surely come!"

As she spoke there was a terrific report as the hind tyre of a passing
car burst with due violence, a sudden convulsive bound as the Devil leapt
with all four feet off the ground, and a thunder of hoofs as, with the
bit between his teeth, he cleared for the open just as a man on a
sixteen-hand bay turned in at the race-stand opening.

CHAPTER XXVIII

"To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus
And witch the world with noble horsemanship!"--_Shakespeare_.

The onlookers behaved in the orthodox runaway-horse manner.

Women screamed, or took the opportunity to manipulate a surreptitious
powder-puff.

Men shouted and waved their topees, or shouted and performed equestrian
gymnastics, and the jockeys _en masse_ cursed their masters' presence,
and the more or less mythical value of their respective mounts.

Just for that one moment in which anything occurring out of your
ordinary rut leaves you practically stunned into inertia.

Then things began to shape themselves, and for one unbelievable second
caste was thrown to the soft wind which was sweeping up the last rags
of mist.

Military mingled with commerce, the I.C.S. which, written in full,
means God's Anointed, looked _at_ instead of _through_ the railway;
jute condescended to the tourist, and white ejaculated to kaffyolay as
they all sat gazing after the retreating form of the Devil and the
pursuing shapes of one or two, who, fairly decently mounted, were
pe