Duberly had ever seen, and where the “tempting” yearlings put on strength and muscle for the arduous work that lay before them. That such a doubt did linger in the old man’s mind was a fact of which he himself was almost ignorant. Had any human being ventured to hint a syllable in disparagement of Arthur Vavasour the blood of the quondam cotton lord would have been up at once, and he would have indignantly repelled the insinuations of the enemy. According to his own belief he had placed implicit faith in Arthur’s assurances that the turf and he were strangers, and that his “occasional” visits to Pear-tree House were either purely business ones, or were the natural consequences of his dead father’s respect and liking for honest, straightforward John Beacham. It was the certainty that his father-in-law had so believed, and in consequence of that belief had consented to the already arranged marriage, which was the main cause of Arthur’s anxiety that Rough Diamond should, by winning the Derby, diminish the chance--a very slender one he hoped and trusted--of Andrew Duberly’s discovering the trick--for trick it was--that had been played upon him. “Manchester man” though he was, and somewhat rough in manner--to say nothing of his living out of the pale of Arthur’s “world”--that young man nevertheless, such is the force of moral worth, dreaded, more than he would have cared to own, the betrayal to his wife’s father of the secret which, for all his seeming carelessness, had not lain altogether lightly on his bosom. His debts--barring those of _honour_, considerable though they were--troubled him but little. Tradesmen, however careful of their own interests, will never press inconveniently for payment when they know for a certainty that in the family of their debtor there are assets sufficient to defray ten thousandfold the “little account” which added interest is yearly swelling. It was the floating paper, his debts to so-called friends, and above all, as I have just said, it was the guarding of his disgraceful secret, which, even under other circumstances than the present, would, on the day before the Derby, have made Arthur Vavasour’s brow a clouded one by day, and broken his natural sleep by night. And even now--madly, passionately as he loved the woman of whom it was guilt even to think, and from whom, to his intense annoyance, he had been so suddenly and violently separated--Arthur could not avoid the frequent recurrence of the oppressive thoughts connected with his own falsehood, and the morrow’s all-important event. Even on his way home on foot from the theatre--walking, contrary to his custom, because he desired time for thought previous to his return to home and Sophy--even then, with the memory of Honor’s bewildering beauty still fresh within his brain, reflections born of his complicated troubles forced themselves upon his unwilling mind. What would happen to him if the favourite--a chance quite, of course, upon the cards--were