"Bob, I believe you are worsted, and you deserve it. All was smooth. Fortune had fallen in love with you. She had decreed you the first prize in her wheel—twenty thousand pounds; she only required that you should hold your hand out and take it. And what did you do? You called for a horse and rode a-hunting to Warwickshire. Your sweetheart—Fortune, I mean—was perfectly indulgent. She said, 'I'll excuse him; he's young.' She waited, like 'Patience on a monument,' till the chase was over and the vermin-prey run down. She expected you would come back then, and be a good lad. You might still have had her first prize.
"It capped her beyond expression, and me too, to find that, instead of thundering home in a breakneck gallop and laying your assize laurels at her feet, you coolly took coach up to London. What you have done there Satan knows; nothing in this world, I believe, but sat and sulked. Your face was never lily fair, but it is olive green now. You're not as bonny as you were, man."
"And who is to have this prize you talk so much about?"
"Only a baronet; that is all. I have not a doubt in my own mind you've lost her. She will be Lady Nunnely before Christmas."
"Hem! Quite probable."
"But she need not to have been. Fool of a lad! I swear you might have had her."
"By what token, Mr. Yorke?"
"By every token—by the light of her eyes, the red of her cheeks. Red they grew when your name was mentioned, though of custom they are pale."
"My chance is quite over, I suppose?"
"It ought to be. But try; it is worth trying. I call this Sir Philip milk and water. And then he writes verses, they say—tags rhymes. You are above that, Bob, at all events."