"Of course," she said, "such a fall may be anything from a scratched face up to being killed—one of Mr. Rensslaer's drivers had just such a fall, not from hobbles, but from the track being badly made, and the man did not hurt himself a bit, but he has known a man killed by it. Still, you may say that of every sport. Take hunting—"
"Oh, Lord," cried Chris, "don't compare our national pastime with Trotting, please!"
But Gay affected not to hear. "I can quite understand a man being fond of riding, or even of 'riding jolly,'" she said severely. "Our forefathers did—and on considerably more jumping powder than in these almost Spartan days—and it must be a lovely feeling that everything is plain sailing, that neither you nor your horse are capable of making a mistake—in that heavenly state of mind you do remarkable things over and over again that you never could do in cold blood—but that is quite a different thing to steeplechasing!"
"Quite," agreed Chris in a tone that made Gay turn away indignantly, thinking of Carlton, and what he had not hesitated to do for her. Yes, Chris was certainly doing his best to throw her into his absent rival's arms, while on the other hand he was cut to the heart by her reception of him, so utterly different to the one for which during long weeks of pain he had longed.
Unconsciously, he had looked for a little of that "mothering" that the best kind of woman knows how to give the man she loves, when in trouble, but Chris's pride was more than equal to his tenderness of heart, and he gave no sign of his wound.
"Mr. Rensslaer has asked us over to his place at Vienna—he is going to let me drive one of his Trotters for him. After all," cried Gay, becoming only the more rebellious under Chris's grave looks—Chris the gay-hearted, whom she had confidently reckoned on to think her right whatever she did—"why should a thing that is right in Vienna, be wrong in England?"
"In Rome," murmured Chris vaguely, "you must do as the 'Rum-uns' do."
"Oh," cried Gay impatiently, "we know that vice and virtue are matters of climate and colour, that what is right in the east, is wrong in the west, and it's the same with Trotting—if I am satirised in England, I shall make up for it in the encouragement and respect I shall get abroad!"
She jumped up, and fetched some large photographs that represented an attractive girl driving one of Rensslaer's trotters, and Chris mentally compared this modest presentment of a modest woman, in an elegant conveyance, with the fiendish cleverness of a sketch representing Gay perched upon a shining skeleton wagon, with a charming leg stretched along a shaft on either side of it.
"You're too good for it, Gay," he said, "either there or here. Rensslaer is right—there is no future for Trotting under present conditions in England."