s usual through the clean
leaves and boughs of the beech wood, doing its best to lend an air of
picturesqueness to lobster salads and aspics, and shone brilliantly on
servants, with their coats off, unpacking hampers at rows of long
tables, and on people busily engaged in the inartistic business of
eating.

In the paddock there was an unusual number of horses being led round
and round in a ring, and some well-known bookies--not often seen at the
little provincial meeting--were present with their raucous cries and
their money-bags.

Kitty Sherard carried a pair of field-glasses on a long strap, and
consulted from time to time a little gold-bound pocket-book in which
she added up figures with a business-like air. She believed in
Ormiston, which Sir Nigel Christopherson was riding, and she had
something on Lamplighter as well. She knew every bookmaker on the
course by sight, and had as much knowledge of the field as any one in
the ring. And she looked exactly like some very beautiful child, and
carried a parasol of rose-coloured chiffon beneath which her complexion
and eyes appeared to great advantage. She smiled whether winning or
losing, and ate a tiny luncheon with an epicurean air.

At four o'clock in the afternoon it is an accepted custom at Sedgwick
Races for every one to have tea before the last event, and then horses
are put to in coaches and carriages, and those who have attended the
meeting whether for business or pleasure drive back to their own homes,
or go slowly downhill in a long string to the little railway station
where, for two days at least in the year, the local station-master is a
person of importance.

Mrs. Ogilvie arrived at the racecourse, as she had promised to do,
about tea-time. She hardly ever cared to watch the races; but she
stood amongst her friends for a while in the pleasant shade of the
wood, and looked on at the little gathering with that air of detached
and hardly concealed weariness which she always felt on such occasions.
She congratulated Peter, who had won a rather closely finished race
earlier in the day; but her voice betrayed little interest in the
event, and an onlooker might have been surprised at the almost distant
way in which she spoke to him. She was sumptuously dressed, as usual,
and wore her clothes with extravagant carelessness. She found herself
at tea-time sitting next Canon Wrottesley, whose patriarchal mood
seemed to her unnecessarily affected, and she req