"I have bet against your horse, Lady Welter."
"My horse?" said Adelaide, coolly and scornfully. "My horses are all post-horses, hired for the day to bring me here. I hope none of them are engaged in the races, as I shall have to go home with a pair only, and then I shall be disgraced for ever."
"I mean Haphazard."
"Oh, that horse?" said Adelaide; "that is Lord Ascot's horse, not mine. I hope you may win. You ought to win something, oughtn't you? Welter has won a great deal from you, I believe."
The facts were the other way. But Hornby said no more to her. She was glad of this, though she liked him well enough, for she hoped that she had offended him by her insolent manner. But they were at cross-purposes.
Presently Lord Welter came swinging in among them; he looked terribly savage and wild, and Charles thought he had been drinking. Knowing what he was in this mood, and knowing also the mood Adelaide was in, he dreaded some scene. "But they cannot quarrel so soon," he thought.
"How d'ye do?" said Lord Welter to the knot of men round his wife's carriage. "Lady Welter, have your people got any champagne, or anything of that sort?"
"I suppose so; you had better ask them."
She had not forgotten what he had said to her that morning so brutally. She saw he was madly angry, and would have liked to make him commit himself before these men. She had fawned, and wheedled, and flattered for a month; but now she was Lady Welter, and he should feel it.
Lord Welter looked still more savage, but said nothing. A man brought him some wine; and, as he gave it to him, Adelaide said, as quietly as though she were telling him that there was some dust on his coat—