This keeping alive of the old rivalry contained in it a subtile flattery to Elizabeth. But Blair himself was well calculated to charm. He was fond of a screeching run after the hounds, as Skelton contemptuously said, but he was a gentleman from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. He might not give Hilary a tutor, or Mary a governess, but his children never heard him utter a rude word to their mother or any one else, or saw him guilty of the smallest _gaucherie_ in word or deed. His negroes adored him, his horses came at his voice, his dogs disputed with his children for the touch of his hand. He knew all the poetry and romance existing, and a great many other things besides. It was easy enough to understand why he was the pet and darling of women--for the sex is discerning. Your true woman’s man is always a good deal of a man. This was the case with Jack Blair, in spite of his fatal fondness for a certain ellipse of a mile and a quarter, upon which he had lost more money than he cared to own up to. But, at least, there was no deceit about Blair. Elizabeth often implored him to promise her never to bet at the races, never to bet at cards, and a great many other things; but he always refused. “No,” he said, “I’ll make no promise I can’t keep. I may not be the best husband in the world, but at least I’ve never lied to you, and I don’t propose to put myself in the way of temptation now.” It was true that he had never even used a subterfuge towards her. But Elizabeth was haunted by a fear that Blair thought lightly of money obligations, and that inability to pay was not, to him, the terrible and disgraceful thing it was to her. Then, she was tormented by a perfectly ridiculous and feminine jealousy. For all she was a clever enough woman, in the matter of jealousy and a few other trifles of that kind all women are fools alike. This amused Blair hugely, who had a smile and a soft word and a squeeze of the hand for every woman in the county, Mrs. Shapleigh included, but who was the soul of loyalty to Elizabeth. If only he would give up horse racing! for so Elizabeth came to think to herself when the mortgages multiplied on Newington, and after every fall and spring meeting of the Jockey Club she was called upon to sign her name to something or other that Blair paid her for in the tenderest kisses. But there seemed to be a sort of fatality about the whole thing. Blair was thought to be the best judge of horses in the county, yet he rarely had a good horse, and more rarely still won a race. Something always happened at the last minute to upset his triumph. Like all men who are the willing victims of chance, Blair was a firm believer in luck. Everybody knows, he argued, that luck ebbs and flows. The more he lost on the Campdown course, the more he was eventually bound to win on that very course. Elizabeth, with her practical woman’s wit, did not believe at all in luck, but she believed in Blair, which was the same thing in that case.