"This is hardly a lady's game, you know," Mackrell protested, "and, fond as I am of it, I could not recommend you to take it up seriously. The surroundings are not quite of the same class as Ascot or Goodwood, you know, and you would be an isolated instance." "Wear your plainest clothes, no ornaments, and bring no money with you," had been Carlton's significant instructions when Gay had expressed a wish to attend a trotting meeting--and who could possibly have expected that horses, everything, would appear to her under a rose-hued glamour that assuredly they did not possess? Gay did not notice the component elements of the crowd, as Chris did--the weather was dazzling, the sun cozened, illumined the scene, and with a lover on either side of her to make things pleasant, the novelty of everything intoxicated her. Trotting showed to her in most attractive guise, and very differently to how it did later. "I don't care," she said wilfully, "I'm fond of it, and I mean to do it, so _that's_ settled. If you give me the benefit of your experiences"--she turned to Carlton--"I shall be grateful, and I won't be more of a nuisance than I can help." Carlton Mackrell bowed. "You could never be a nuisance," he said gravely, "and my advice is always at your command." Almost immediately after he left them, and full of her delightful project, escorted by Chris Hannen, Gay Lawless left the pretty little racecourse. CHAPTER II A MAN OF SCIENCE Professor Lawless was a scientist, and, as is common among professors and scientists, very eccentric. A Bachelor of Medicine, he had practised as much or as little as pleased him, and devoted most of his time to the materialisation of experiments that, if perfected, would make his fortune. Not that it was with this end in view that he laboured, for his means were considerable, and it was his custom to give his services and advice to patients gratis in the majority of cases, although his sister Gay was no advocate of this practice. "Why don't you put up a notice with "Free Hospital" on it over the door, and have done with the farce of refusing to take fees from people who can well afford them?" she used to ask indignantly. "You forget that it cost a heap of money during the five years you were learning the little you now know"--she laughed, for he was really a walking encyclopædia of learning--"and do you intend to get none of it back?" Her brother would beam at her through the glasses that were eternally slipping off his nose. "You are too commercial, Gay," he said. "None of us are infallible, and it would pain me to think that I had taken money for what might, after all, have been a mistaken diagnosis. I have ample means for my wants--which are simple--and I disapprove strongly of the tactics employed by some medical men in accepting fees for ailments which are often imaginary, and more often curable by fresh air and exercise than drugs and knives."