"Yes--if either of them could have any real friend but each other. They made the most delightful pair. Whenever you met them--and they were never apart except when he was racing--they were having no end of a good time, and cutting jokes together--what one said, the other thought, and it was always amusing. I remember her talking one day to Chris about something she would do 'when she was old and respectable,' and he said, 'you'll never be old, and you'll never be respectable,' and they both roared--it was a treat to see them together." "He will never think any other woman fit to tie her shoe-string," said Gay. "Oh," cried Lavinia, "she was by no means perfect! 'Chris loves me for what I might have been--not for what I am,' she said to me one day. But cheer up, Gay, the dear boy will put on weight, and settle down quietly, and ride to hounds like any other country gentleman, once you are married." But Gay could not see Chris jogging to hounds on a weight-carrier, and she worried a good deal in a quiet way. The world said there was nothing like taking up a man's pursuits to rub the bloom off a girl's face, and being so famous--or notorious--had by no means improved her. Something of her snap and freshness had departed, and Min Toplady, who occasionally saw her at Meetings, observed with much concern that her young lady had grown thinner, quieter, that the radiant girl who had gone to Inigo Court with Chris, to applaud Carlton Mackrell when he won, had vanished, seemingly never to return. Min wished that gentleman would come home, persuade Gay to marry him, and settle down in the country as a sporting squire, with her for the Lady Bountiful that Nature had plainly cut her out to be. Of course Mr. Chris was a dangerous rival, but neither rich like the other, nor desirable as a husband, from the habit he had of risking his neck whenever he got a chance. And Min did not think Miss Gay would elect to live with her heart in her mouth for at least six months out of every year, so that the betting was at least even on Carlton Mackrell. Of course, _that_ Miss Lossie was always waiting to cut in, and get the latter for herself, but, as Min vulgarly expressed it in her own mind, he wasn't taking any. Fortunately the Professor did not worry Gay, for as if to make up for wasted time, and terrified of meeting Lossie, he had disappeared among his microscopes and tubes, and burrowed there. He seemed, as Gay expressed it, to be chewing the cud of ticklish experiments that wouldn't come off, and when he went down to see Chris, he did not offer to take her, nor did she propose to accompany him, for even while her heart yearned over the boy, she felt for him a curious anger, realising all that his love of steeplechasing cost her.