“You may make your mind easy on that score. ‘A burnt child dreads the fire;’ and I have been badly singed. If I can only pull my chestnuts out all right this time I’ll never go near the turf again.”
“It is much easier to make good resolutions than to keep them,” growled Captain Vaughan from the rear. “If you lose, no doubt it will be all plain sailing for this high resolve of yours; but if you win, it will be another matter. Having once tasted blood, it will be hard to choke off your racing instincts. Why not scratch Tornado to-morrow and commence this reformation before the race?”
“Hear him!” cried Captain Campell angrily; “and my four thousand and odd pounds, where would they be? Your advice is no doubt kindly meant, Vaughan; but we all know that ‘Il est plus facile d’être sage pour les autres que de l’être pour soi-même.’ I shall not begin my reformation, as you call it, until the day after to-morrow.”
Half-an-hour’s brisk walking brought the three pedestrians near Monkswood. They crossed the park—how weird it looked in the moonlight!—and the house itself—what an imposing pile! They traversed the smooth-shaven pleasure-ground and ascended the shallow steps, where wide-open French windows gave forth streams of light and peals of laughter. They looked in, and this is what they saw: A long, low, old-fashioned room, brilliantly lighted and most luxuriously furnished—flowers, pictures, china, caught the eye on every side. A space had been cleared, and a dancing lesson was evidently in full swing. Close to the window, with her back to them, stood a young lady in a pink dress; beside her a portly middle-aged man was holding out his coat-tails and capering insanely. He was evidently being initiated in the “trois temps” by a lovely girl opposite, in black net, with quantities of natural pale-blush roses pinned into the bodice of her dress and her hair. She was slim, graceful, beautiful, and looked about nineteen. A handsome matron in black satin was playing a waltz mechanically, as she looked over her shoulder at the dancing. An old lady in a monumental cap was peering above her spectacles with intense amusement, and a long-legged youth had thrown himself into a chair in absolute convulsions of laughter. Having at length got breath, he said:
“Go on, Alice; go on. Show him once more.”
The young lady in black, thus adjured, held up her dress in front and modestly displayed a pair of the prettiest, most fairy-like Louis Quatorze shoes and the slenderest of black silk ankles.
“Now, Mark,” she said authoritatively, “mind this is the last time. One foot forward, so; bring up the other, and turn, so, one, two, three—one, two, three; nothing can be easier. Are you looking?”
“Of course he is looking. Do you take him for a fool? Isn’t he looking at the prettiest pair of ankles in Great Britain?”
“Geoffrey,” retorted the girl without turning her head, “I’m coming to box your ears directly. Go on, Mark,” she proceeded encouragingly; “if I could only reach round your waist I’d dance gentleman, and then you would soon get into it.”