If Mr. Rensslaer would only weigh in, and race Trotters himself, she thought, but he wouldn't, and then she got up, fetched her little basket of keys, and waving her hand to Heron, set out on her usual morning tour of housekeeping.
The Professor waited till she had gone, then deliberately kicked the offending newspaper round the room (all men of science are childish), and departed, well-pleased with himself, to his study. Inflating his pigeon-chest, he said to himself that Gay was a dear little thing, if misguided—and after all she had him to stand by her. The escapade of yesterday would probably do no more than make a nine days' talk, then blow over, and when she married Chris, as the Professor had always felt sure she intended to do ultimately, she would be just a domesticated girl, with all this racing rubbish knocked clean out of her head.
At eleven o'clock, Rensslaer was announced, and Gay rose eagerly to meet him, for he might be able to give her news of Carlton, from whom she had heard nothing, and she put the question without loss of time.
"Well," said Rensslaer, "it struck me as ironic that one of the few men who had conferred distinction on the sport of Trotting in England, should be expelled the Club, when so many undesirables remain to disgrace it, so I looked in at St. James's Place just now to tell him so."
Gay opened her lips to ask how he looked, then checked herself, but in reality Carlton was not in the least disgraced. Everyone knew how he had lost a race purposely that a pretty girl might win it, but he did blame himself for encouraging Gay in her fad, and still more for the weakness that had at all costs determined her girlish wish for the Gold Vase should be gratified.
He had done her as ill a turn as a man can do the woman he loves, but he felt justly, that Rensslaer was to blame for the scandal of Gay's driving herself, that the latter should have dissuaded her, and taken Brusher's place, and had not hesitated to tell him so when he appeared.
"We had a talk over his plans for the future," said Rensslaer, "and I strongly advised him to race his horses in Vienna and Paris, and offered him every assistance should he decide to do so. But he didn't seem keen on it—promised to think it over, and let me know. Said he was taking a short run abroad for the present—would probably do a cure at Aix."
A look of keen relief crossed Gay's face, and at that moment a servant entered with an express letter. While Gay, asking permission from Rensslaer, read it, he thought how almost incredible was the amount of wicked, even dishonest, things that a dear, pretty little girl, honest as the day, could make a man do, and how ungrateful she could prove herself for his doing them.
"Will she feel bound to reward him, I wonder? Will he expect it?" he thought.
Yet with William Blake, Rensslaer knew that