Goodwood was looking superb.
It was a perfect day, airy yet cloudless. Rain had fallen in the night and, stopping at cock-crow, left everything refreshed. Distance was clean-cut. For such as had eyes, the sheep grazing in the valleys made sharp white dots upon the green, the Isle of Wight rode like a ship at anchor between earth and heaven. Background, indeed, had much to answer for, lending the meeting the air of the old prize-ring, rigged like lightning, deep in some unsuspecting dingle of the suspected countryside. The artifice of gardens and playgrounds, jealously kept against the builder’s hand, had here no place. Time had stepped back into an England where men passed out of doors on to the open road and, lifting up their eyes, beheld more meads than bricks and woods than mortar, where parishes were worlds and London Town was half a fairy-tale.
After a last look at Grey Ruby, Beaulieu strolled out of the Paddock and back to the Lawn. There he encountered Miss Bohun almost at once.
“Where’s George?” he said, taking her hand.
“In bed with a touch of the sun. It’s nothing serious. I want to go to the Paddock. Will you come with me?”
The man hesitated before complying.
Patricia knew him so well that, unless he could smother his feelings as never before, she would be certain to see that something unusual was afoot. Then she would question him: and Beaulieu did not want to be questioned—till after the Cup had been won.
He need have felt no concern.
As they passed to the back of the Paddock—
“Simon, I’m up against it.”