'Oh! it was beautiful. I don't wonder at people coming to races now. I feel as if I had never been quite alive before. Just that one moment when the horses were tearing past. It was wonderful.'
'A very fair race,' said James, with a patronizing air, 'but there were some wretched screws among them. You'll see a better set by and by, for the cup. Iphianassa, the Oak's winner, is first favourite. The bookmen call her Free-and-Easy, for short. And now we'll have a bottle of cham.'
'Not a bad move,' said Mr. Elgood, approvingly. 'That kind of thing makes a fellow dryish.'
He made himself very useful in helping to open the baskets; there were two hampers, one for wine and the other for comestibles, the 'Waterfowl' having done things handsomely. Mr. Elgood took one of the golden-necked bottles out of the rush case, found the glasses, the nippers, and opened the bottle as neatly as a waiter. He had the lion's share of the wine for his trouble.
James and Justina had only one glass between them. They could very easily have had two, but they liked this mutual goblet, and sipped the bright wine gaily, Justina taking about as much as Titania might have consumed from a chalice made of a harebell.
The champagne bottle was hardly open when a gipsy appeared at the carriage door, as if attracted by the popping of the cork, an elderly gipsy, with an orange silk handkerchief tied across her black hair, amongst which a few silver threads were visible. She was the identical gipsy woman who had stopped James Penwyn and his companions, yesterday afternoon, by the river.
'Give the poor old gipsy woman a little drop of wine, kind gentleman,' she asked, insinuatingly.
Justina drew back shuddering, drew nearer her companion, till her slight form pressed against his shoulder, and he could feel that she trembled.
'Why, what's the matter, you timid bird?' he whispered tenderly, drawing his arm round her by an instinctive movement. They were standing up in the carriage as they had stood to see the race, Mrs. Dempson with her face towards the box, whence Mr. Elgood was pointing out features of interest on the course.