"Even if it _is_ only a passing excitement for a man to whose great wealth the newest crazes and the most costly distractions are mere commonplaces," she said, "anyway its a more noble one than any of the other American millionaires have thought of, and Mr. Vanderbilt deserves all the credit as a true sportsman that is already his, or I'm much mistaken." Rensslaer smiled. "Aren't you rather hard on millionaires," he said, "almost as hard as your favourite Roosevelt, who has a healthy hatred for the multi-millionaire,--says he is worse than a demagogue? He quotes some chap who declares that the multi's face has grown hard, while his body has grown soft, that his son is a fool, and his daughter a foreign princess, and his nominal pleasures at the best those of tasteless and extravagant luxury, but whose real delight, and real life-work, are the accumulation and use of power in the most sordid, and least elevating form!" "Out of breath, aren't you?" said Gay. "Well, thank Heaven you're not a multi"--not knowing that Rensslaer _was_--"at least he would admit that you are doing good work with this wonderful Horse Show." "By the way, I heard from Mr. Mackrell yesterday," said Rensslaer. "He is coming over for it." Gay, looking between her horse's ears, waiting for the uplifted hand of the constable to fall, and release the traffic, turned pale. There are some debts of honour more binding than the friend's I.O.U. that is never presented, and Gay felt that Carlton's was one of them--a queer prophetic instinct told her that this Horse Show was to be the turning point of her life. "I was glad to find Mr. Hannen so much better when I went to see him yesterday," went on Rensslaer. "He told me he hoped to be well enough to call on you next week"--here he ducked, and disappeared as the policeman's hand fell, but Lossie, whose ears were quick, was in the seventh heaven of delight. Carlton was coming back; Chris, whose absence and misfortune had melted Gay's heart, thinned her body, and almost quenched her bloom, was appearing once more on the scene--everything promised well. CHAPTER XXIII AT ELSINORE After all, it was chance that dictated Gay should go to Elsinore, or rather the accident of Rensslaer's having cut in just before the Professor, and obtained a certain rare edition that the latter greatly coveted. He would cheerfully have started for Kamschatka to read or borrow it; Elsinore was nearer, and when Gay mentioned the invitation, he jumped at it, and went. So one fine morning in May found brother and sister in the train, and Rensslaer waited for them at the station with a pair of magnificent Trotting horses, harnessed to a light road wagon of hickory wood and steel. Inviting Gay to share the very small seat with him, he pointed out, to the Professor's intense relief, a sober open carriage for the latter's use.