“Really! at the Bank! So your time there is not absolutely wasted. What brought her to London, I wonder?”
“Well, she has an old uncle, a queer old fellow, and he's a sort of porter—money porter—in the Bank, awfully honest, or he might half break it some fine day, if he chose to cut and run. She's got a sister, prettier than this girl, the fellows say; I've never seen her. I expect I've seen a portrait of her, though.”
“Ah!” Mrs. Lovell musically drew him on. “Was she dark, too?”
“No, she's fair. At least, she is in her portrait.”
“Brown hair; hazel eyes?”
“Oh—oh! You guess, do you?”
“I guess nothing, though it seems profitable. That Yankee betting man 'guesses,' and what heaps of money he makes by it!”
“I wish I did,” Algernon sighed. “All my guessing and reckoning goes wrong. I'm safe for next Spring, that's one comfort. I shall make twenty thousand next Spring.”
“On Templemore?”
“That's the horse. I've got a little on Tenpenny Nail as well. But I'm quite safe on Templemore; unless the Evil Principle comes into the field.”