It was out at last. He had no idea until he uttered the words how mean a creature the utterance of them would make him seem to himself. There are people who go through life borrowing, and who do it with the easiest grace, seeming to confer rather than to ask a favour. But perhaps even with these gifted ones the first plunge was painful. “Fifteen or twenty, if you like, sir,” replied Hayfield. “I’ve got a few pounds in an old stocking, and any little sum like that is freely at your service. I know your father’s son won’t break his word or forget that an old servant’s savings are his only bulwark against age and decay.” “My dear Hayfield, of course I shall repay you next quarter, without fail.” “Thank you, Mr. Harrington, I feel sure you will. And if at the same time I may venture a word, as an old man to a young one, in all friendliness and respect, I would ask you to beware of horses. I heard some one let drop the other evening in the billiard-room at the ‘Antelope,’ where I occasionally play a fifty, I heard it said, promiscuously, that Sir Henry Baldwin is a better hand at selling a horse than you are at buying one.” “That’s bosh, Hayfield, and people in a God-forsaken town like Dorchester will always talk bosh—especially in a public billiard-room. The horse is a good horse, and I shall come home upon him when I send him up to Tattersall’s after the hunting.” “I only hope he won’t come home upon you, sir. You’d better not put a high reserve upon him if you don’t want to see him again. I used to be considered a pretty good judge of a horse in my time. I never was an equestrian, but one sees more of a horse from the pavement than when one is on his back.” Harrington felt that he must bear with this twaddle for the sake of the twenty pounds which would enable him to lend Juliet a round fifty, and would thereby enable Juliet to go to Medlow Court and flirt with unknown men, and forget him upon whom her impecuniosity was inflicting such humiliation. After all, love is only another name for suffering. Mr. Hayfield lived in West-Walk terrace, where he had a neat first floor in a stucco villa, semi-detached, and built at a period when villas strove to be architectural without attaining beauty. The first floor consisted of a front sitting-room, looking out upon the alley of sycamores and the green beyond, and a back bedroom, looking over gardens and houses, towards the church-tower in the heart of the town.