“Of course not,” answered Blair, becoming serious. “If you were a man I should knock you down. As you are a woman, I can’t, but I decline to take any notice of what you say. This is the seventeenth girl, I believe, that you have accused me of making eyes at.” Elizabeth condescended to smile at this, and harmony was in a fair way to be restored between them. But after a moment Elizabeth said: “There is something else, though, which troubled me that night. It was at the dinner table.” Blair knew in an instant that she meant his increased subscription to the Jockey Club, but he asked what she meant. “Can you ask me?” replied Elizabeth. “The devil I can,” cried Blair, dropping at once into the ordinary, every-day, vexed-husband’s tone. “Look here, Elizabeth, didn’t you encourage me?” “What could I do,” answered his wife with a piteous smile, “with Richard Skelton looking on and pitying me?” “And what could _I_ do, with Skelton challenging me in every tone of his voice and look of his eye? Don’t I know that Miles Lightfoot has got his orders to ruin me at any cost? And do you think that a man would quietly draw out and yield the field to another man under the circumstances? No, Elizabeth, I beat Skelton in the race for you, and I’ll beat him again on the Campdown course. And it isn’t so hard as you think. You know that black colt Alabaster, of old Tom Shapleigh’s? Well, that colt is more than three fourths thoroughbred--he has a strain of blood in him that goes straight back to Diomed. Now, that three fourths thoroughbred can beat any thoroughbred in Skelton’s stable; and Skelton himself said so in effect the night of that confounded dinner, and I’m going to have that horse. I shall have him with this money that you have enabled me to raise, and which I regard as a gift from you.” Blair kissed her again--he certainly knew how to express his thanks. Elizabeth had heard the story about Alabaster and Diomed before. “But I thought you said Mr. Shapleigh wouldn’t sell him?” “He _shall_ sell him, by George!” cried Blair violently, and bringing his fist down on the mantel. “Elizabeth, you can’t imagine how the desire to own that horse has taken possession of me. You make yourself jealous about a lot of pink-faced girls that I never looked at twice, and, if you only knew it, your real rival is Alabaster. I swear I am in love with that horse! I dream about him at night. I never saw such quarters in my life--so strong, so sinewy, yet so light! And in the daytime, as I ride by the pasture and see him roaming around, not half attended to, it maddens me that such a creature should not be more appreciated. If I had him I could pay off all the mortgages on this place. I could send Hilary to school, and have a governess for Mary. I could give you a new carriage, and, better than all, I could beat Skelton at his own game.”