He was enraptured. He tossed the remainder of his tumbler down, and filled himself a third, emptying the bottle. He had almost forgotten the wager in the intoxication of his personal triumph. Dash it! It had not taken him long to cut out young Bellairs. What a demnition handsome piece she was. There wasn’t one of those raffish ladies he had left behind him at Standish Hall could hold a candle to her. And odds his life! What a pair of eyes she had, and what teeth, and what a skin! Suddenly she dropped her knife and fork. “Sir Jasper,” said she, with an air of great gravity, “I’ll not go a step farther with you unless you do something for me.” “Name it, my dear.” “Why, sir, send Job back with a letter to my parents. And ’twill be the best for yourself, I can tell you, as matters stand. My father wouldn’t let the king rob him of his daughter without a fight.” He stood staring at her doubtfully, his wide nostrils scenting mischief like an irritated bull; she went on very quickly, “I’ll not go a step farther with you unless you do. Give me your tablets--gentlemen always carry them, I know. You shall see for yourself what I write. “_Dear Father--don’t be alarmed, I’m going with Sir Jasper for a wager. ’Tis a mere joke. He’s too grand a gentleman to let harm come to me out of it.--Your loving daughter, Pam._” She read it to him. He went over it himself, then once more tried to catch her to him, vowing she was as clever as she was handsome. “Nay, nay, nay!” She was the most imperative, tantalising creature possible to imagine. “Now, Sir Jasper, run and give this to Job yourself. Stay, put a guinea with it, to make the lad eager. Tell him to ride, ride, ride, hell for leather! Isn’t that what you gentlemen say? Hell for leather,” she repeated, laughing, as she hustled him from the room. “Don’t come back to me till you’ve seen him start.” He went. That third bumper of champagne on the head of so many potations earlier in the day, after the long, cold drive, had fairly stupefied him. He went, because her strong will drove him, without attempting to analyse her motive. For the moment his suspicious brain was lulled to a kind of imbecile complacence. He went pounding forth. As soon as the sound of his heavy steps died away on the wooden boards, Pamela was out of the room like a dart. She had seen the dark pit of the back stairs gape on the passage as they had passed along to the sitting-room. She was down it now, as sure-footed as if it had been lit up. In another moment, past a pair of staring kitchen sluts and a tapman, she was out in the back yard and running along the village street.