Skelton had not intended to return Blair’s last visit until after the race meeting, but the conviction that Blair would lose the race induced him to go over one day in the early spring to pay a visit, thinking it would be very painful to seek Blair out in defeat. So he drove over in his stylish curricle. Hilary met him at the door of the Newington house, and Skelton mentally compared him to Lewis Pryor, much to Lewis’s advantage. Skelton, though, scarcely did Hilary justice. The boy had his father’s physique and Blair’s wide mouth and white teeth, and also a great many freckles; but he had his mother’s charming expression. He escorted Skelton within the house. Blair at once appeared, and with much apparent cordiality led the way into the old-fashioned drawing-room, where Elizabeth sat sewing, with little Mary at her knee. An Arab hospitality prevailed among these people, and enemies were welcomed at each other’s houses. They talked together very amicably without once mentioning the subject which was uppermost in all their minds, until suddenly Hilary, with that maladroit ingenuity of which boys seem peculiarly possessed, asked suddenly: “Mr. Skelton, how’s Lewis Pryor coming on with Jaybird?” “Admirably,” responded Skelton with the utmost coolness. Blair had turned red, while Elizabeth had grown pale. Only little Mary sat and sewed unconcernedly. “I think,” said Elizabeth, after an awkward pause, and expressing the first idea that came into her mind, “it is the last race I will ever consent to let Hilary ride. I don’t think it does boys any good to interest them in such things.” Here was an opportunity for Skelton to hit back for Blair’s sneer at Lewis Pryor when the match was first arranged. “If you have the slightest objection to it,” he said blandly, “speak only one word and it is off. I need not say to you that I should regard the forfeit as nothing, and even give up the pleasure of seeing my horse matched against Mr. Blair’s, rather than give you one moment’s pain.” “Ah, no,” cried Elizabeth--she had taken fire at Skelton’s tone, and hastened to redeem herself from the humiliation of trying to get out of it. Blair simply glared at her. He thought Elizabeth had lost her senses; and before she could utter another word, he said, with a kind of savage coolness: “Certainly not. But if you think that your--young ward, is he--?” “Lewis Pryor is not my ward, he is Mr. Bulstrode’s,” responded Skelton, without the slightest change of tone. But there was a flush rising in his dark face. Blair managed to convey, subtly, a contempt of the boy, which was to Skelton the most infuriating thing under heaven. “Very well, then, whatever he is; if you feel any doubts of his ability to manage a horse--”