Had Chris but looked at her in that moment of insight, of revelation, each might have been spared much sorrow, but he was staring straight before him, his face set and stern at the _impasse_ to which he and Gay had come--he thought he knew now the real reason why she had refused him at the Ffolliott's dance. At that pregnant moment the door opened slowly, and a timid face came round the corner, like a rabbit peering from a burrow; since Min Toplady's visit, the Professor always looked first to see if Lossie were there, before entering. "Are you alone, my dear? Ah, only Chris, I see," and the Professor came forward, and shook his 'case's' hand warmly. If only the boy could be weaned from steeplechasing, there was no one he would like better for a brother-in-law, though of course it must be a long--a very long engagement. "I wish," he said presently to Chris in his tactless way, "that you would persuade Gay to listen to reason, and give up Trotting." "He had better get the whip-hand of _himself_ before he tries to manage others," cried Gay; then looking at Chris, white, wasted, invincible in his weakness, her heart was pierced with cruel pain. He looked like slipping through, without the help of any more accidents, and what would life be worth to her without him? As she moved to the window, and stood looking out, she lived again those awful moments at Sandown, yet when she came back to the two men, her face told nothing, for if Chris had pluck, she had grit, and the latter wears best in the long run. "Each to its own, Heron," she said--"you to your books and microscope, Chris to his racers, and I to my Trotters; there isn't a pin to choose between the selfishness of any one or us!" And Chris, when presently he said good-bye, thought grimly that she was about right. CHAPTER XXVI CARLTON'S "LITTLE BILL" It was characteristic of Carlton Mackrell that he should turn up unexpectedly in the Park one afternoon, looking his usual unruffled self, and greet the little party sitting under a tree, as if he had only parted from them a few hours earlier. No thought of the presentation of his "little bill" cooled the warmth of Gay's welcome; Lossie paid him the tribute of nearly fainting from excess of joy, while Chris, who knew his only real rival with Gay to be his own passion for steeplechasing, was cordiality itself.