Dinner that day, at least until the champagne had circulated, was less lively than usual. Everybody seemed silent and pre-occupied. Sir Henry, to use his own expression, had not "got out" in time on one of the principal races, and as the favourite was never "in the hunt," being beaten half a mile from home, the baronet experienced a double annoyance, of losing his money, and feeling also that he had been less astute than his neighbours when he suffered Outrigger to carry a large stake for him in the Thames Handicap. Mrs. Lascelles, watching his face narrowly, began to torment herself, but taking her tone from his, these two presently recovered their equanimity. Sir Henry liked champagne, and drank it freely. The exhilarating tendency of that agreeable wine, acting on the buoyancy of his disposition, soon put dull care to flight, and before dinner was half over, he had forgotten ill-luck, losses, and embarrassments, and disposed himself to grasp the enjoyments of the present as only such natures can. But not all the wine that ever was corked at Epernay could have enlivened Uncle Joseph after the disclosures of to-day. He hardly spoke to Miss Ross before they sat down; and when she offered him the usual little posy for his button-hole, refused the flowers with a rudeness that would have been brutal, but for the wounded feelings his petulance revealed. Truth compels me to admit that, notwithstanding his mercantile probity, Uncle Joseph scarcely behaved like an honest man in the present transaction. He was not really half so angry as he pretended to be; but remembering, in his previous experience, that such little quarrels often cleared the way to mutual understanding and good-will, he resolved to stick by the precepts of that great amatory authority, "Ovid with the Nose," and prepare, by a good dose of sulks to-night, for a "_redinte-gratio amoris_" to-morrow. Jin, on the contrary, whose present idea it was to keep all her irons in the fire, suffering no profusion of birds in the bush to distract her entirely from the one in hand, proceeded to approach and circumvent her host as craftily as a Scotch keeper stalks an old cock grouse in October. She gazed on him at intervals with mournful curiosity, withdrawing her eyes the instant they met his glance. She sighed, she talked _at_ him, she even tried to flirt a little with Goldthred, something in the day's adventures preventing her from sharpening her weapons on Sir Henry; as a last resource, she affected headache and extreme fatigue, while she related, with touching frankness, the accident she had sustained, making light of its danger, and most ungratefully ignoring the gallantry of her preserver. But all to no purpose--she deceived nobody. Uncle Joseph grew crustier every moment, and Sir Henry, who was easily amused, smiled as he bethought him that, but for the good looks of the lady, this ill-matched couple reminded him forcibly of a monkey and a bear.