"Beautiful!" he said, with a smile which showed his white, even teeth. "Beautiful! It's a charming view; but we saw little of it this visit. Ah, Shelton, you are really an epicure! We don't get clear turtle like this at the Pallodeon--eh, Adrien?" "No," replied the young man, looking up. "We ought to have Shelton on the committee. No wonder they love you here, Shelton! And so the colt has lost the steeplechase? I saw the news as I came along." "And you have lost, how much--two thousand?" queried Parselle. "Five," said Vermont, not quickly, but just before Adrien could speak. "Is it five?" asked Leroy indifferently. "I thought I'd backed 'Venus' for more." "I backed her myself for a couple of hundred," put in Lord Standon ruefully. "She's a beautiful creature, though, and I'd like to buy her." "You can have her, my dear Stan, for a mere song," said Leroy cordially. "I'm afraid that's impossible," interposed Jasper with suavity. "She's sold." Adrien looked up in surprise. "Sold! To whom?" he asked. "To the knacker," was the calm reply. "Don't you remember, Adrien, that she threw Fording and broke her leg over the last hurdle?" Leroy's race resumed its usual air of bored indifference. "Ah, yes, so you told me. My dear Stan, I'm awfully sorry! I had completely forgotten." He looked round the table. "Any of you seen the papers?" he inquired. "Last night was the first of the new comedy at the Casket--how did it go?" Frank Parselle laughed. "I was there," he admitted. "Ada played finely, but they hissed once or twice." "Lost on my horse and on my new play. That is bad luck!" exclaimed Adrien, looking, however, very little disturbed by the news. "It must be withdrawn." "Certainly," agreed Vermont amiably. "Certainly." "By Jove! what did you tell me the mounting cost?" asked Parselle, addressing Vermont, but glancing significantly at the others. "Three thousand pounds," answered Vermont glibly, while Adrien ate his fish with the most consummate indifference. "Three thousand for four nights, that's about it. The public ought to be grateful to you," said Shelton with a tinge of sarcasm in his voice, as he nodded across at Leroy. Adrien laughed. "Or I to them," he said cheerfully. "It's no light thing to sit through a bad play. But how is that, Jasper? You said it would run." "I?" protested Vermont, with a pleasant smile. "No, Adrien, not so certainly as that. I said I thought the play well written, and that in my opinion it ought to run well--a very different thing. Eh, Shelton?" "Ah!" replied Shelton, who had been watching him keenly. "So you were out in your reckoning for once. It is to be hoped you didn't make the same mistake with the colt. I think you were also favourably inclined to that, weren't you?" "Yes," admitted Vermont, leaning back with an admirable air of content. "I laid my usual little bet, and lost--of course." "You should have hedged," said Shelton, who knew as a positive fact that Vermont had done so.