The Cabinet minister drew on his grey gloves carefully, then adjusted the fingers slowly.
"Lord Boredom," he said, "is motoring Miss Moover to Town just in time for her performance. Good-bye again. So many thanks for a charming visit." He turned to his host with a smile. "Come to me directly you come up," he said. "If you want that baronetcy."
"In the outside lot again," said Holbrook, lugubriously. "But he's a good sort, he may understand, my love."
The races played their part. Gore Helmsley, a splendid rider, won easily, cantering in five lengths in front, his long figure looking its best on horseback, his dark face glowed when he rode. Young Knox's horse fell; the boy came in muddy, shaken, sad in mind, because it was a jostle with his rival which had knocked him down.
Sybil gathered some gold gaily. Jimmy had put a tenner on for her. With a girl's folly she feasted her eyes on tinsel, turning away from the duller mint of hall-marked gold. Here the curtains might fall on a tragedy, fall hurriedly, for the chief actress would have to smile and call it comedy to her audience if she was ever to appear again on Society's stage.
Sybil came laughing to one of the smaller sitting-rooms that evening, a room warm, softly lighted, one ordered as one chose at Coombe Regis. She was having tea then with Gore Helmsley.
"No one will look for us here," he had said as he rang the bell. "Let's have a quiet half-hour. Talk to me, little pal, I'm tired."
Over the indifferent tea, poured out of a gilt teapot, Sybil smiled gaily, held out her day's winnings—twenty pounds.
"See, I owe you money for bridge, for two nights. Take it. I hope there's enough to pay. I did play stupidly."
Jimmie pushed back the pile of gold. "My dear, you lost eighty pounds. What does it matter—that can stand over. I paid the Cavendish for you; she's a cat and would talk."