"But," said Chris, who at heart deeply resented Mackrell's encouraging Gay in her misguided fancy, "when such men as Rensslaer and Vancouver and that ilk, all hold aloof from the sport as understood in England, what chance has it of becoming a national sport? The trotting tracks here are so bad that it is really kinder not to enumerate them; most are in connection with public-houses, and the people who frequent them are the middle class. Trotting, in short, is the sport of that and the lower classes, and they trot cheap horses in consequence." "Unfortunately," said Mackrell, with a slightly heightened colour, for he got fearfully chaffed among his own set for his bizarre taste, "the upper classes take no interest in Trotting in England. It will take time to prove to them that a trotter is not necessarily a butcher's horse, but can vie with a hackney and swell carriage horse, and is almost as fast as a motor car as well, thus combining the horse and motor in one animal. Of course we all know that in America the trotter is the National horse, as the thoroughbred is the English one." Chris was silent. He thought that Mackrell understood trotting, or rather mixed trotting and pacing, as practised in England, but knew nothing of the higher art of trotting, that is to say, real first-class trotting with horses worth money, and which could go in 2.8 or better--like the famous Rensslaer's, for example. "Are you _really_ going to keep Trotters, Gay?" Lossie cut in sharply. "Rather! and I'm going to train at Flytton. Inigo Court's close by, you know, and I shall love seeing my horses jog in the morning. They'll let me do that, I suppose?" she asked Carlton Mackrell, and pointedly turning her back on Chris. "Oh, certainly," he replied, after a moment's hesitation, and much to the disgust of the Professor, who considered that all this horsey talk was more suitable for stables than a drawing-room. He did hope Gay would not become one of those horrid, slangy, racing-women he abominated; almost unconsciously he exchanged a glance with Lossie, who flashed back one of sympathy, for jealousy and envy of Gay corroded her. All the advantages were with Gay--money, position, freedom--there was even her great capacity for winning hearts to set against her cousin's beauty; it wasn't fair, and the unfairest thing of all was Carlton Mackrell's obvious devotion, and as Lossie sat unnoticed, while Gay was the magnet that drew the eyes and hearts of both men present, perhaps the two smartest and best-looking men of their circle, and one of whom Lossie loved, her gorge rose. Fortunately Gay was not in love with him, and up to now, at any rate, Carlton had not picked a quarrel with Lossie for loving him unbidden, as some men do (regarding it as an unwarrantable encroachment on their liberty), and when Gay married Chris, whom she loved without knowing it, then Lossie would cut in, and a beautiful woman at close quarters is a beautiful woman all the world over.