But for the expected “coming off” of this sporting event, it is more than probable that Fred Norcott would not have honoured the sports that day with his presence. He had no taste for innocent amusements--the hospitable and kindly owners of Danescourt, were very far, and well he knew it, from looking upon him with friendly eyes. Since the days when his family were “county people,” the days when old Mr. Norcott was a magistrate, a subscriber to the hounds, a man having authority, in short, with tenants under him, society in general had grown to take a very different view of the Norcotts whilom of Lingfield. With humble Mrs. Baker, as representative in Sandyshire of the family honour and “respectability,” and with loafing Fred Norcott, lying very decidedly under one of those social clouds which nothing but the sunshine of wealth and prosperity can pierce through and cast aside, it was scarcely surprising that that gentleman’s associates should stand on a rung of the social ladder lower than that on which his forefathers had found themselves. Daily, hourly even, this fact was brought home, in not the pleasantest manner in the world, to the notice of the quondam admired and popular London man, who had returned, as he had hoped, whitewashed and renovated by his temporary absence, and by his marriage with a woman who, he had taken great pains to make generally known, was a colonial heiress on the largest scale. Very much disgusted was Fred, when he found that certain never thoroughly cleared-up accusations were still standing in array against him; and it was decidedly under protest that he took the lower room to which he found himself reduced. In the “sporting world,” that world whose limits as regards “respectability” are so ill defined, Fred Norcott was still allowed admittance. He had committed no flagrant act of dishonesty--above all, his payments of “debts of honour” had been both prompt and undisputed; though in what way, or from what fund, those debts were paid, his _confrères_ never cared to inquire. As Fred was a good fellow so long as he paid his way, and possessed a little spare cash in his pocket, he might be seen hand and glove with certain persons of good standing, betting-men so called, amateurs of racing matters, who neither under nor above the rose made racing a _profession_, and who, falling in accidentally at sporting meetings with the Colonel, accepted his acquaintance as a matter of course, and thus, to a certain extent, linked him with the more high-principled and exclusive portion of the community.