"I was riding your horse, Prince William, sir, and he was on edge. He spilled me off the drive into the water at that sharp turn a couple of miles up. I had only a snaffle-rein and could not hold him." "Only a snaffle-rein! Why I would never think of riding that rascal myself without a curb. Hayward," he called to the footman, who was passing, "what kind of carelessness is this?—your sending the Prince to Mr. Scott with only a snaffle-rein? You know very well that brute cannot be controlled without a curb. I’m surprised at you. Such a lack of sense as that is almost criminal. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Don’t repeat that performance—see to it you don’t!" As Helen was standing in a yard of her father, Hayward heard this stinging rebuke in unalloyed surprise, but as she made no demur, he saluted when the President was done, and said only: "Yes, sir; it shall not occur again, sir." When her father had spoken so sharply to the footman Helen had turned to Mr. Scott, expecting him to exonerate Hayward; but Caroline Whitney’s look of genuine sympathy when Mr. Phillips spoke of that brute’s being uncontrollable without the curb bribed the bedraggled young man to silence. Helen saw Caroline’s glance, and caught the reason for Bobby’s lack of candour, but she was disgusted with him. She was uncomfortable because of the injustice her silence had done, for she was of an eminently fair mind: and she told her father the whole truth of the affair at the first opportunity.... She could not see how Hayward bore himself so composedly under the undeserved rebuke. If he would abase himself thus, would barter his self-respect, would lick the hand that smote him, in order that he might obtain his commission—if he would sell his manhood for it—for anything—he would be contemptible in her sight.... Again the question came: Why was he a footman? She could not remember that he had ever answered it. Oh, yes,—the idea had but just recurred to her—she would read _Ruy Blas_. So, on a long summer’s afternoon she read _Ruy Blas_—read the tale of the love of a flunkey for his Queen: and while, when the idea finally dawned upon her, and she first clearly understood the significance of it all, she was— But let us not detail that. * * * * * Helen and Hayward Graham were married on a day in late October. *CHAPTER XXIV*