"Dick, my child, you have lost some money. How much? You shall have it to-morrow."
"Not half a halfpenny, Bob; but I was with Lady Welter just after the race, and I heard more than I ought to have heard."
"You couldn't help it, I hope."
"I ought to have helped it; but it was so sudden, I couldn't help it. And now I can't ease my mind by telling anybody."
"I suppose it was some rascality of Welter's," said Sir Robert, laughing. "It don't much matter; only don't tell any one, you know." And then they went in again, and Dicky never told any one till every one knew.
For it came out soon that Lord Ascot had been madly betting, by commission, against his own horse, and that forty years' rents of his estates wouldn't set my lord on his legs again. With his usual irresolution, he had changed his policy—partly owing, I fear, to our dear old friend Lady Ascot's perpetual croaking about "Ramoneur blood," and its staying qualities. So, after betting such a sum on his own horse as gave the betting world confidence, and excusing himself by pleading his well-known poverty from going further, he had hedged, by commission; and, could his horse have lost, he would have won enough to have set matters right at Ranford. He dared not ask a great jockey to ride for him under such circumstances, and so he puffed one of his own lads to the world, and broke with Wells. The lad had sold him like a sheep. Meanwhile, thinking himself a man of honour, poor fool, he had raised every farthing possible on his estate to meet his engagements on the turf in case of failure—in case of his horse winning by some mischance, if such a thing could be. And so it came about that the men of the turf were all honourably paid, and he and his tradesmen were ruined. The estates were entailed; but for thirty years Ranford must be in the hands of strangers. Lord Welter, too, had raised money, and lost fearfully by the same speculation.
There are some men who are always in the right place when they are wanted—always ready to do good and kind actions—and who are generally found "to the fore" in times of trouble. Such a man was General Mainwaring. When Lord Ascot fell down in a fit, he was beside him, and, having seen him doing well, and having heard from him, as he recovered, the fearful extent of the disaster, he had posted across country to Ranford and told Lady Ascot.
She took it very quietly.
"Win or lose," she said, "it is all one to this unhappy house. Tell them to get out my horses, dear general, and let me go to my poor darling Ascot. You have heard nothing of Charles Ravenshoe, general?"