The great day of the sporting year, the “maddest,” if not exactly the “merriest” day, was close at hand; and the world, both high and low, rich and poor, one _against_ another, were on the _qui-vive_ of excitement and the very tip-toe of expectation. Among these variously interested beings, one of those who had in reality most at stake, was Arthur Vavasour. Fortune, honour, credit, all were involved, and that to no limited extent, in the winning of the Derby race by that big-boned, coarse-made, but wonderfully _staying_ horse, Rough Diamond. Time was (before the master passion had laid hold of, grappled with, and finally taken possession of this impulsive and ill-trained young man) when the result of the morrow’s racing would have occupied his every thought, and would have seemed to his eyes the most important of all earthly considerations. And all-important indeed it was; for spurred on thereto by money difficulties, and being but of a weak and unstable character, Arthur Vavasour had, as the reader must have already gathered, deceived, and to a certain degree outwitted, the shrewd and rather obstinate old man, whose ideas of honour and morality were so widely different from his own. By marrying Sophy Duberly he had for a time escaped the consequences of his own reckless extravagance, and of the gaming propensities, the knowledge of which would, as he well knew, have entirely prevented the union between himself and one of the richest heiresses of the day; but happiness had not followed upon his sin, nor had a sense of security been the consequence of his deception.