Clang! presently again. It is the saddling bell once more. But there is no Dashaway in this race. Nevertheless it is very exciting. There are half a dozen horses, and after the start is made it looks to be anybody’s race. Even as they come pounding down the straight sweep of the last two furlongs, it would be hard to pick out the probable winner. The people on the grand stand have gone wild--they are shouting names, the men waving their hats, the women standing up on benches to see as two or three horses gradually draw away from the others, and a desperate struggle is promised within the last thirty lengths. And just at this moment, when everybody’s attention is fixed on the incoming horses, French Pembroke has slipped across the track and is speaking to the blonde woman in the victoria. His face does not look pleasant. He has chosen this moment, when all attention is fixed on something else to speak to her, so that it will not be observed--and although he adopts the subterfuge, he despises it. Nor does the blonde woman fail to see through it. She does not relish being spoken to on the sly as it were. Nothing, however, disturbs the cheerful urbanity of the gentleman by her side. He gets out of the carriage and grasps Pembroke by the hand. He calls him “mon cher” a vulgar mode of address which Pembroke resents with a curt “Good-morning, Mr. Ahlberg,” and then he lifts his hat to the lady whom he calls Madame Koller. “Why did you not come before?” she asks, “you might have known it would be dull enough.” “Don’t you know everybody here?” “Oh, yes,” replied Madame Koller, sighing profoundly. “I remember all of them--and most of the men have called. Some of them are so strange. They stay all day when they come. And such queer carriages.” “And the costumes. The costumes!” adds Mr. Ahlberg on the ground. Pembroke felt a sense of helpless indignation. He answered Mr. Ahlberg by turning his back, and completely ignoring that excessively stylish person. “You must remember the four years’ harrowing they have been through,” he says to Madame Koller. “But they are so thoroughly established in their own esteem,” he adds with a little malice, “that they are indifferent even to the disapproval of Madame Koller. I am glad to see you looking so well. I must, however, leave you now, as I am one of the managers, and must look after the weighing.” “Now you are going away because I have been disagreeable,” remarked Madame Koller reproachfully. “And poor Ahlberg--” “Must take care of you, and do his best to amuse you,” answered Pembroke with a laugh and a look that classed Ahlberg with Madame’s poodle or her parrot. “Good-bye,” and in a minute he was gone. Madame Koller looked sulky. Mr. Ahlberg’s good humor and composure were perfectly unruffled. Hardly any one noticed Pembroke’s little expedition except Mrs. Peyton and Olivia Berkeley. Mrs. Peyton mounted a pair of large gold spectacles, and then remarked to Olivia: