"Making money, eh?" said Tony, holding in his mouth like a cigarette the pencil that was going to make money for him. "I've not done so badly," said the other, deprecatingly. "Look here, you must dine with us to-night," Tony declared, cheerily. "We're having a little celebration at the Blue Boar." "Delighted, I'm sure. That's what I always like about racing," said Houston, "it brings out all our best sporting qualities as a nation." Dorothy thought her husband was going to say something rude, but she need not have been worried. He had no intention of being rude to a man who would lay so heavily against the horse he thought was bound to win. In fact, he went out of his way to be specially friendly to Houston, and during the month of May the financier was at Curzon Street almost every day. Moreover, he brought with him others like himself who were willing to bet heavily with Clarehaven, and Dorothy began to think that even Captain Keith and Mrs. Mainwaring and those Saturday afternoons of peroxide and pink powder at Windsor or Lingfield Park were better than this nightmare of hooked noses and splay mouths. "Well," said Lonsdale, "if anybody ever talks to me again about the 'lost' tribes or the missing link, I shall ask him if he's looked in Curzon Street. He'll find both there." "Tony's being a little bit promiscuous," said Henry Tufton. "But of course one _must_ remember that the king was very fond of Jews. And then there was Disraeli, don't you know, and the late queen." Just before the Derby, Houston, whom, in spite of the menace he seemed to hold out against the future of Tony's career on the turf, Dorothy could not help liking in the intervals when she forgot about her premonitions of misfortune, said to her in a tone that it would have been hard to accuse of insincerity: "Look here, I want to show you I'm a true friend, and I warn you that my horse is going to win the Derby. Nothing can beat him. Tell Clarehaven to hedge. I wish I'd not laid that bet now, for I hate taking his money. I suppose he'd be insulted if I offered to cancel the bet? But I would, if he would." Dorothy told Tony about Houston's offer; but he laughed at her and said that, like all Jews, Houston did not relish losing his money. Nevertheless, finding that his liabilities were alarmingly high and knowing that Houston, not content with laying against Moonbeam, was backing Chimpanzee wherever he could, Tony invested some money on the second favorite and declined to lay another halfpenny against him. As a matter of fact, the money he invested thus was in comparison with the thousands for which he had backed Moonbeam a trifle; but rumor exaggerated the sum, and when Chimpanzee won the Derby, with Moonbeam just shut out of a place, there were unpleasant rumors in the clubs.