“Your lordship may say that:  he’ll go precious nigh to astonish the Saxons, I think.  I suppose the pick-up at the Derby’ll be nigh four thousand this year.”

“I suppose it will—­something like that.”

“Well; I would like a nag out of our stables to do the trick on the downs, and av’ we does it iver, it’ll be now.  Mr Igoe’s standing a deal of cash on him.  I wonder is Mr Blake standing much on him, my lord?”

“You’d be precious deep, Grady, if you could find what he’s doing in that way.”

“That’s thrue for you, my lord; but av’ he, or your lordship, wants to get more on, now’s the time.  I’ll lay twenty thousand pounds this moment, that afther he’s been a fortnight at Johnny Scott’s the odds agin him won’t be more than ten to one, from that day till the morning he comes out on the downs.”

“I dare say not.”

“I wondher who your lordship’ll put up?”

“That must depend on Scott, and what sort of a string he has running.  He’s nothing, as yet, high in the betting, except Hardicanute.”

“Nothing, my lord; and, take my word for it, that horse is ownly jist run up for the sake of the betting; that’s not his nathural position.  Well, Pat, you may take the saddle off.  Will your lordship see the mare out to-day?”

“Not to-day, Grady.  Let’s see, what’s the day she runs?”

“The fifteenth of May, my lord.  I’m afraid Mr Watts’ Patriot ’ll be too much for her; that’s av’ he’ll run kind; but he don’t do that always.  Well, good morning to your lordship.”

“Good morning, Grady;” and Frank rode back towards Handicap Lodge.

He had a great contest with himself on his road home.  He had hated the horses two days since, when he was at Grey Abbey, and had hated himself, for having become their possessor; and now he couldn’t bear the thought of parting with them.  To be steward of the Curragh—­to own the best horse of the year—­and to win the Derby, were very pleasant things in themselves; and for what was he going to give over all this glory, pleasure and profit, to another?  To please a girl who had rejected him, even jilted him, and to appease an old earl who had already turned him out of his house!  No, he wouldn’t do it.  By the time that he was half a mile from Igoe’s stables he had determined that, as the girl was gone it would be a pity to throw the horses after her; he would finish this year on the turf; and then, if Fanny Wyndham was still her own mistress after Christmas, he would again ask her her mind.  “If she’s a girl of spirit,” he said to himself—­“and nobody knows better than I do that she is, she won’t like me the worse for having shown that I’m not to be led by the nose by a pompous old fool like Lord Cashel,” and he rode on, fortifying himself in this resolution, for the second half mile.  “But what the deuce should he do about money?” There was only one more half mile before he was again at Handicap Lodge.—­Guinness’s people had his title-deeds,