“Deuced badly,� answered Bulstrode, with candid disapproval. “Nothing but the damnable races, morning, noon, and night. Do you know Miles Lightfoot?�
Mrs. Blair gave a little shudder.
“Yes, I know him,� she answered.
“The fellow was born a gentleman and bred one, I hear,� continued Bulstrode with energy, “but rides for pay in any sort of a race that he can get a mount. I ain’t a gentleman myself, Mrs. Blair, but I know one when I see him, and Miles Lightfoot has ceased to be a gentleman these ten years past. Well, he’s fairly domiciled at Deerchase. He is in charge of the Deerchase stable. Instead of Bulstrode and the library, Skelton is all for Lightfoot and the stables. Don’t know what made our friend Skelton take up this craze, but he’s got it, and he’s got an object in it.�
“What is his object?� timidly asked Mrs. Blair—the boy had gone off then with his book, and was engaged in a good-natured teasing contest with his father. Blair’s children adored him, and thought him precisely their own age.
“I’m dashed if I know,� cried Bulstrode, rumpling up his shock of grizzly, unkempt hair. “But that he’s got an object— Lord, Mrs. Blair, did you ever know Richard Skelton to do anything without an object?�
“It has been a good many years since I knew anything of Richard Skelton,� she said, with pretty hypocrisy; at which Bulstrode roared out his great, vulgar, good-natured “Haw! haw! haw!�
“Mr. Blair called at Deerchase when Mr. Skelton returned, and Mr. Skelton has paid me one visit, when he stayed exactly twenty minutes.�
But all the time her heart was beating painfully. She knew Skelton’s object—it was, to ruin her husband. Bulstrode kept up his haw-hawing.
“You wouldn’t marry Skelton, ma’am, and you showed your sense. There are worse men than he in the world, but if I were a woman I’d rather marry the devil himself than Richard Skelton.�