Traffic and Highway Engineering 5th Edition Garber

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Chapter 5
Highway Safety
5-1
Explain the difference between short-term and long-term driver expectancy, and
provide an example of each.

Expectancy is the ability of drivers to rely on past experience to assist with

control, guidance, or navigation tasks. When driver expectancy is taking into
consideration in the design of roadways, the negative effect of the driver’s
limitations in processing information is reduced because drivers only need to
process new information.
Examples of long-term expectancies are:
- Freeway exists are located on the right-hand side of the road
- At an intersection of a major and minor road controlled by a stop sign,
the stop sign is on the approaches of the road that appears to be the
minor road
- At an intersection approach, a driver wishing to turn left will be in the
left lane or on a through lane that allows left-turns
Examples of short-term expectancies:
- A long section of roadway with gently winding characteristics is
contiguous with a roadway section that has gentle curves
- A long section of roadway that allows for high speed driving is
contiguous with a roadway sections that also allows for high speed
driving
- Driving at a consistent speed along a well coordinated system of traffic
signals on an arterial should not suddenly lead to an isolated
intersection with a significantly different cycle length

5-2
Briefly explain the steps in the roadway safety management process as outlined in
the Highway Safety Manual.

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 The HSM recommends that the Roadway Safety Management process should
involve the following steps:
- Network Screening – In this step, sites at which the potential for
reducing average crash frequency exists are identified and ranked,
through a review of the transportation network
- Diagnosis – In this step crash patterns are determined through the
collection and analysis of historic data, and evaluation of site
conditions

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Chapter 5: Highway Safety Chapter 5: Highway Safety

- Select Countermeasures – This step involves determining probable

crash related factors at a site and selecting countermeasures that will
be effective in reducing crash frequency.
- Economic Appraisal – This step involves conducting an appropriate
economic analysis to identify specific projects that are economically
justifiable.
- Prioritize Projects – In this step, the projects that are economically
justifiable at specific sites and across multiple sites are prioritized with
respect to their potential to achieving safety objectives within the
available budget. Prioritization factors may include low cost, mobility
enhancement potential or reduced negative environmental impact.
- Safety Effectiveness Evaluation – In this step the selected
countermeasures at a site or multiple sites are evaluated to determine
how effective they are or would be in reducing annual crash frequency
or severity.

5-3
Describe the type of information on a collision diagram.

Collision diagrams include symbols used to represent different types of

maneuvers, types of accidents, and severity of accidents. The date and time the
accident occurs is also included on the diagram. Because the diagrams provide the
information in a pictorial format, the location of accidents is immediately known.

5-4
Identify and explain the system for identifying levels of crash severity as used in the
Highway Safety Manual.

Crash severity is the level of injury or property damage that is incurred as

a result of a crash, where injury is defined as bodily harm to a person. There are
several different methods to rank severity. However, the HSM uses the KABCO
scale. There are five levels in this scale and are given as:
K – Fatal Injury: an injury that results in death
A – Incapacitating Injury: An injury that does not result in death, but
causes the injured to be incapable of walking, or driving or continue to perform in
activities that he/she could before the occurrence of the injury.
B – Non-incapacitating evident injury: An injury that is neither a fatal or
an incapacitating injury that is visible to observers at the site at which the crash
occurred.
C – Possible injury: Any injury that is neither incapacitating nor a non-
incapacitating evident, including a claim of injury that is not evident.
O – No injury, i.e. Property Damage Only (PDO)

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Chapter 5: Highway Safety Chapter 5: Highway Safety

5-5
Determine the crash modification factor (using Table 5.14) that can be used to
estimate the change in frequency of the crash type targeted by a proposed
improvement that will widen a two-lane rural highway from 18 to 22 ft if the
highway has an AADT of 1250 veh/day.

a) The CMFexist can be calculated according to Table 5.14, for a rural two-lane
roadway with 9ft lane width and 400 < AADT < 2000:

‫ܥܯܨ‬௘௫௘௦௧ = 1.05 + 2.81 × 10ିସ (‫ ܣܣܦ‬−

400) ‫ܥܯܨ‬௘௫௘௦௧ = 1.05 + 2.81 × 10ିସ (1250
− 400) ‫ܥܯܨ‬௘௫௘௦௧ = 1.28885

b) The CMFnew can be calculated according to Table 5.14, for a rural two-lane
roadway with 11ft lane width and 400 < AADT < 2000:

‫ܥܯܨ‬௘௘௪ = 1.01 + 2.5 × 10ିହ (400 − ‫)ܣܣܦ‬

‫ܥܯܨ‬௘௘௪ = 1.01 + 2.5 × 10ିହ (1250 − 400)
‫ܥܯܨ‬௘௘௪ = 1.03125

c) The CMF to estimate the change in frequency can be calculated by:

‫ܥܯܨ‬௘௘௪ 1.03125
‫= ܥܯܨ‬ = = 0.8001
‫ܥܯܨ‬௘௫௘௦ 1.28885
௧

5-6
In Problem 5-5, if there are an average of 25 crashes per year on the segment
proposed for improvement, and 62% of the crashes are of the type targeted by the
improvement, estimate the expected number of crashes (per year) after the
improvement is constructed.

a) Calculate the crash modification factor for the effect of lane width on total
crashes (Equation 5.14):

‫ܥܯܨ‬ଵ௘ = (‫ܥܯܨ‬௘௘ − 1)௘௘௘ + 1.0

‫ܥܯܨ‬ଵ௘ = (0.8001 − 1)0.62 + 1.0
‫ܥܯܨ‬ଵ௘ = 0.8761

b) Calculate expected number of crashes:

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Chapter 5: Highway Safety Chapter 5: Highway Safety

ܽ
‫݂ ܥݎݏ‬௘ ‫݂݂ݐ݂݂ ݂ݑ݂݂݂ݎ‬௘‫ܧݔ‬ℎ݂22 ≈ 21.9 = 25× ) 0.8761( = ‫ݏ‬
ܽ
݂‫ݎݏ‬ℎ݂‫ݏ‬

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Another document from Scribd.com that is
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interest of his hobbies, he had none to spare for his old friends, much less
for society, which he despised.

But he liked her sporting spirit when first he saw her at Inigo Court,
pitied her for the disillusion that her Trotting passion was bound to bring
her, admired her pluck when things went wrong, found her true-hearted,
honest and kind, therefore after his own heart.

Yet when he went presently away, he somewhat sadly thought of the

careless, happy girl, enthusing about her Trotters, whom he had found on
his first visit. Unconsciously he murmured to himself:

"Give her back her youth again,

Let her be as she was then!
Let her wave her little hand
With its gesture of command...."

Yes, even the lightest bruise on youth, splendid, unbroken,

unconscious even in its selfishness, was a pity.

CHAPTER XXII

KING OF THE ROAD

Lossie, waiting in the tiny blue dining-room in South Street for Gay to
fetch her, glanced round at the blue walls, the old copper prints, the bits
of old Nankin, at the flowers on the table, blue also, and looking in the
glass at those bluer flowers in her own head, felt a sudden nostalgia, a
longing to have Carlton Mackrell beside her in her own milieu. It is what
a woman in love always wants, and everyday her pain at the deprivation
of Carlton's society became sharper, for there is no greater spendthrift in
love than the selfish woman who has the full intention, bien entendu, of
getting her own back, in one form or another.
 Turning to the window, she saw Gay drive up, and cheerily wave her
whip to her—that was the disgusting thing about Gay, that whether really
happy, or only pretending, she always pluckily tried to live up to her
name, thought Lossie, as she went out, pretending to herself that she was
a mere cat's-paw, to be used or ignored by Gay as occasion served, but
really glad of the opportunity of displaying her lovely clothes.

"Aunt Lavinia's slumming," said Lossie, in reply to the other's query,

as she climbed to her perch. "Why don't you start a motor?" she
grumbled. "This Ralli car is so selfish—you can't give your friends any
sort of a time with it, or take them any distance. Nowadays one must
either motor or be motored—and I prefer to do the motoring myself."

"Thank you," replied Gay with spirit, "I'm like Roosevelt—when

someone asked him the other day when he was going to buy a motor-car,
he said not while there were horses! I think it's just splendid," she added
warmly, "for the Americans to come over here, and revive our rapidly
waning interest in horses, and if some of our English millionaires spent
their money in the same way, then so much the better would it be for
horses, and for us! The horse is our friend even more than the dog, and
I'd like to see him kept for enjoyment, not degraded to rough street work
—that's where the motor-car should come in!"

Lossie did not trouble to argue the point, she was better occupied in
watching the effect of her beauty on the passers-by, and certainly the
despised Ralli was very smartly turned out, as usual. The occasion, too,
was pleasant, for they were on their way to see Mr. Vanderbilt's coach
start from the Berkeley Hotel on its trial trip to Brighton, hence Gay's
delight at the fillip given to coaching.

"You don't seem to have troubled much about your Trotters lately,"
said Lossie presently as they turned into Berkeley Square. "Yet here is
poor Carlton hounded out of England, treated like any low welsher,
because you fancied a wretched Gold Vase! I wonder you dare show
your face at the Meetings as you do!"

"I shouldn't," said Gay with spirit, "if I had a face as sour as yours is
at this moment! Really, Lossie, when I look at you, I feel thankful I
wasn't born a beauty—it makes you leave everything else—manners,
good temper, such lots of nice things, to chance, and the odds are forty to
one!"
 "Oh, we can't all be a dear, artless little thing, truckling to men's
brutal prejudices—one reason you are so popular with them is, because
you pretend you don't want women to have the vote!" cried Lossie.

"Nor do I!" cried Gay warmly. "I consider an excited, shrieking crowd
of sober women clamouring for their rights, more indecent than a crowd
of men drunk who don't clamour, and when it comes to slapping
policemen's faces, padlocking themselves to railings, and rolling in
gutters, it makes me ashamed of wearing a petticoat!"

"Brains never were your strong point, Gay," said Lossie comfortably,
and Gay emphatically thanked Heaven they were not.

"The most rabid shrieker of them all would become mild as milk, if
her own little baby were put in her arms, and she had her own man to
love her," declared Gay. "And as there aren't enough men to go round,
why don't the women emigrate, and fulfil themselves somewhere else?"

"All women are not so primitive as you are," said Lossie, sneering,
unaware that it was the capacity to feel love as well as evoke it, that
made much of Gay's charm; at the back of all her follies was a heart of
gold, while a cherry stone represented Lossie's own assets in that
particular, save where Carlton was concerned.

But there was no time for further argument, for they found themselves
jammed in the midst of a crowd delighted at the recrudescence of the
horse, with his grace, beauty, speed, and spirit, just as ten years ago a
similar crowd had assembled to see start for the same destination, that
marvel of power and ingenuity which was expected to displace him—the
motor-car.

The glorious days of the "Old Times" coach seemed to be revived

when, drawn by four beautiful greys, their manes braided with red and
white ribbons, their heads decked with red and white camelias, a clean-
shaven, eager-faced young man, with keen dark eyes, the correct
blackness of whose attire was broken by his large red and white
buttonhole, brought his coach up with a flourish, and followed by shouts
and cheers and many cries of "Good luck," shortly sent it on its way.

Smarter than ever in his tightly-fitting coat, showing the neatly-folded

four-in-hand tie, and segment of scarlet gold-buttoned waistcoat, Godden
sprang from the leaders' heads, and climbing to his place, blew a cheery
blast upon his coach-horn. And then began the American's triumph, for
he could not have driven a hundred yards before he found the reward of
his enterprise in the way the people, whether on foot or awheel,
recognised, and gave way to him as king of the road.

Immediately the way was clear, and at a spanking trot, the coach went
bowling along, every horse-drawn or motor-driven vehicle, effacing
itself in honour of the fine team. The crowd's eyes sparkled with pleasure
and welcome at the sight, policemen saluted, women fluttered their
handkerchiefs, men cheered, the while Godden cheerfully chirruped a
return of their welcome and good wishes, but of all the people in the
streets, those to whom the sight of the splendid horses gave the most joy,
were the cabbies, who took off their hats to a man, and waved them with
ecstatic delight, shouting themselves hoarse, and nearly falling off their
boxes in the process.

It was a royal progress from start to finish—from the time the greys,
that had not turned a hair, were changed, and four browns substituted, to
the mixed team of two chestnut wheelers, black near leader, and grey on
the off lead, that in turn gave way to one of perfectly matched black-
browns. At every stage there was a big crowd, till at Brighton it ended in
an extraordinary demonstration of enthusiasm, and through dense,
cheering masses that only left a narrow lane for the coach's passage, the
Metropole was reached.

Blocked in the crowd, Gay inclined an eager ear to the cheers that ran
down Piccadilly. She would have loved to go all the way ... her thoughts
swerved sharply to racing, which was dangerous, wicked even—did not
the poor horses often break their hearts, either dying on the course, or
quietly after the race in their stables?

And Trotting was apparently disgraceful (in England), but to drive a

coach with such horses as she had just seen—why, that would be at once
heavenly and right, thought Gay, as she listened to the echoes, and tried
to imagine herself handling the ribbons of the Vanderbilt coach.

She longed for someone congenial to talk with, and as if in answer to

her wish, Rensslaer, ducking under the horses' heads, suddenly appeared
at her elbow, and Gay's enthusiasm boiled over.
 "Even if it is only a passing excitement for a man to whose great
wealth the newest crazes and the most costly distractions are mere
commonplaces," she said, "anyway its a more noble one than any of the
other American millionaires have thought of, and Mr. Vanderbilt
deserves all the credit as a true sportsman that is already his, or I'm much
mistaken."

Rensslaer smiled.

"Aren't you rather hard on millionaires," he said, "almost as hard as

your favourite Roosevelt, who has a healthy hatred for the multi-
millionaire,—says he is worse than a demagogue? He quotes some chap
who declares that the multi's face has grown hard, while his body has
grown soft, that his son is a fool, and his daughter a foreign princess, and
his nominal pleasures at the best those of tasteless and extravagant
luxury, but whose real delight, and real life-work, are the accumulation
and use of power in the most sordid, and least elevating form!"

"Out of breath, aren't you?" said Gay. "Well, thank Heaven you're not
a multi"—not knowing that Rensslaer was—"at least he would admit that
you are doing good work with this wonderful Horse Show."

"By the way, I heard from Mr. Mackrell yesterday," said Rensslaer.
"He is coming over for it."

Gay, looking between her horse's ears, waiting for the uplifted hand of
the constable to fall, and release the traffic, turned pale. There are some
debts of honour more binding than the friend's I.O.U. that is never
presented, and Gay felt that Carlton's was one of them—a queer
prophetic instinct told her that this Horse Show was to be the turning
point of her life.

"I was glad to find Mr. Hannen so much better when I went to see him
yesterday," went on Rensslaer. "He told me he hoped to be well enough
to call on you next week"—here he ducked, and disappeared as the
policeman's hand fell, but Lossie, whose ears were quick, was in the
seventh heaven of delight.

Carlton was coming back; Chris, whose absence and misfortune had
melted Gay's heart, thinned her body, and almost quenched her bloom,
was appearing once more on the scene—everything promised well.
 CHAPTER XXIII

AT ELSINORE

After all, it was chance that dictated Gay should go to Elsinore, or

rather the accident of Rensslaer's having cut in just before the Professor,
and obtained a certain rare edition that the latter greatly coveted. He
would cheerfully have started for Kamschatka to read or borrow it;
Elsinore was nearer, and when Gay mentioned the invitation, he jumped
at it, and went.

So one fine morning in May found brother and sister in the train, and
Rensslaer waited for them at the station with a pair of magnificent
Trotting horses, harnessed to a light road wagon of hickory wood and
steel. Inviting Gay to share the very small seat with him, he pointed out,
to the Professor's intense relief, a sober open carriage for the latter's use.

"Take care, Gay," Frank cried quaveringly after her, as she squeezed
in beside Rensslaer, and the next moment, her host's hands twisted into
the loops of the reins, they were sweeping through the silent streets, and
out on to the open road, the air whistling in their ears, the dust striking
Gay's eyes and cheeks like pellets, the country almost indistinguishable
as they flew past, and the sensation so thrilling that she surrendered
herself to it in complete enjoyment.

Smoothly as a sleigh on snow, rode the frail vehicle of less than a

hundred pounds, and record-makers both, were the powerful steeds that
guided by the imperturbable driver with arms outstretched, swift as the
wind, swept up hill and down dale, only once beaten by a motor that was
afterwards overtaken, and then Rensslaer eased his steeds, remarking
that they had covered five miles in twelve minutes.

By then they were in his park, and the horses went more quietly, so
that Gay had leisure to observe the sylvan beauty of the landscape
surrounding Elsinore, to notice the herds of deer visible in every
direction, and also his Indian fighting cocks, who roamed his fields in
intermittent warfare with the old English game. Somehow Gay felt that
all were sharers in that instinct of friendliness which seemed to inspire
his relations, not only with all his dumb retainers, but with his fellow-
humans as well.

Original in his house as in everything else, Elsinore was an extended

copy of a Russian peasant's cottage. Made of logs, with a great deal of
carving in wood, and a big Russian stove in each room, the furniture was
covered with linen, embroidered in blue and red by Russian peasants, the
tiles of the stoves being incised in dark blue, red, emerald green, and
gold with white, in true peasant style.

Simplicity was evidently his rule of life, but one room was filled to
the ceiling with books, and to this the Professor naturally gravitated on
his arrival. Leaving him perfectly happy among those rare editions of
which at odd times Rensslaer was an inveterate collector, Gay and her
host sauntered through the quaint house, singularly modest for the far-
spreading park surrounding it, but containing many trophies of his skill,
and to her utter astonishment, in other realms than that of sport.

The cases full of gold and silver medals, of stars and decorations,
interested her very little, nor did Rensslaer trouble to explain that none of
those prizes were for horses, but for a domain in which he stood alone as
champion of the world. But she came to a full stop before the figure,
raised on a pedestal, of a girl with strange barbaric head-dress above her
sweet face, hands folded on breast, and the drapery a little blown away
from the exquisite line of back and hips, and "Exhibited Allied Artists,
190-" written below.

"That's La Russie," he said. "The colouring and tinting are an exact

reproduction of the actual dress and jewels."

"It's beautiful," said Gay, to whom the colouring mattered nothing but
the idea was everything, and reluctantly she tore herself away to look at
an Indian Chief in all his war paint, and modelled in silver, on a table
hard by.

From the summit of his brow, and outlining his haughty back, his
feathers made a regal silhouette that extended beyond his horse's tail, and
the contrast of his grim impassivity, and icy air of detachment, with the
horse's eagerness as it strained forward was marvellously rendered,
making Gay declare that the horse was a dear, and that whoever did that,
must love horses.

The same remark applied to a model of Ascetics Silver, winner of the

Grand National 1906, his ribs plainly showing, his upward, proudly-
soaring eye, dilated nostrils, and the veins standing out on his face and
body, drawing from her a cry of delight. Beneath was written, "Exhibited
Paris Society Animal Painters," and the name of the sculptor made the
girl jump.

"You did that?" she cried incredulously, the colour rushing to her face.

"And here is my Little Mermaid," said Rensslaer, and Gay knew that
what she saw before her was dear to him.

"What a darling!" she exclaimed, and indeed it was a sweet little

body, with childish, startled eyes, and hands impulsively put up to her
cheeks. One could see the grief and horror in the poor little thing's face
—for of course she was watching her beautiful human prince being
married, and the tears seemed to be just coming.

It was a wonderful piece of work, and threw a new light on

Rensslaer's character. Gay realised vividly how strong the love of beauty
was in him, how great the power that enabled him to create it, how
profoundly some human experience must have wrought in his mind to
produce such results.

She was silent, shy even, as he showed her the picture of his
grandfather, who had written a wonderful book on religion that had
estranged him from his family, and that the Professor was even at that
moment handling reverently in the library.

"And this is my great-great-great-grandfather," said Rensslaer as they

turned from the inspired head, the tremendous intellectual force of the
author, to an obvious Dutchman of quite another type, but just as
remarkable.

"He was a famous Dutch painter—our present name is an ugly

corruption of his. We can't help it," said Rensslaer whimsically, "we must
all follow art in one form or another—" And this was the man who, by
the irony of circumstance, was by the multitude supposed to regard fast
Trotting as the be-all and end-all of life! Gay blushed to think of his
amusement when she at first regarded him in the same light—it was
perhaps to correct this impression that he had invited her here, but no, he
was too modest, too sincere for that.

"I've never wanted to be a man till I knew you," said Gay a little
enviously; "you turn perpetually from one thing to another, and there can
be no dull moment in your existence."

Was there not? Across his brown eyes came a shadow that gave the lie
to her words, and once again Gay wondered what the secret romance of
his life was, this man whose ideals of beauty were of the highest, as his
capacity for interpreting them, a conjunction that is very rare.

They were looking at an extraordinary collection of pistols of which

Rensslaer merely pointed out the exquisite workmanship, and it had just
occurred to her that she had heard somewhere that he was a fine shot,
when a servant came to announce luncheon, and on looking for the
Professor, they found him where they had left him. He had merely
moved entranced from book to book that he had long coveted, and one
rare edition had almost, as Frank confessed, slid into his coat-tail pocket,
so that when Rensslaer asked him to accept it, his joy knew no bounds.

Yet, after all, Rensslaer's heart was in his horses, not books, as Gay
discovered, when after luncheon, followed by the Italian greyhound that
adored and never willingly left him, they walked towards the racing
track, on the inside of which was turf smooth as a billiard-table, and
surrounding it in the distance, a great belt of glorious trees.

Gay glanced round eagerly; there was no sign of a horse anywhere, no

stables within sight or hearing, only a peaceful sylvan landscape. Perfect
quiet prevailed as Rensslaer explained to her that his Trotters were
practised, not on the track, but on grass, if they were to be shown where
the ring is of grass, as otherwise a trotter would be apt to break.

"This grass is kept mown very short, and the turns are purposely not
banked up," said Rensslaer, "as they never are at English horse shows,
and the horses have to get used to it. I shoe my horses with spikes when
showing, so that they shall not slip up, and have strong wheels made for
my speed wagons, as the strain on unbanked-up turns, is apt to buckle a
very light wheel, which is quite safe on turns that are banked-up.
 He then showed her that on the half-mile track there were quarter-
mile posts, and also eighth of a mile posts at the ends of the "straights";
the track was two "straights," of an eighth, and two turns of an eighth of
a mile at each end.

"A horse's utmost speed for an eighth can thus be tested," said
Rensslaer. "It is never advisable to put a horse at his utmost limit for
more than an eighth."

Excusing himself for a brief minute, Gay next saw him in enormous
goggles, bunched up on a slender sulky weighing about twenty-eight
pounds, swinging round curves behind a Trotter that did half a mile in
about a minute or so, and yet never broke into a gallop, and Gay realised
that not so much in his Trotters themselves, as in the masterly driving of
them, Rensslaer's pleasure consisted. He held his arms differently—he
drove differently to anyone she had seen before, in its essence his was
the same deep joy that Chris found in the riding at which he excelled.

Her heart warmed to him as she thought of how he had spared her the
humiliation of knowing that Mackrell and she had been playing at a bad
make-believe all the time, that the difference between their horses and
Rensslaer's was, that his had quality, shape, and soundness—they looked
like well-bred chargers, carried themselves with perfect balance, their
hind legs well under them, stopping at a word without any pulling or
fighting, and when the mile was finished, standing quite still. The sort of
horse to which she and Carlton were accustomed, were mostly unsound
old screws which had a fast record in America many years before, but
having broken down, or being otherwise cheap, had been bought and
patched up, then raced in England.

At first they had horrified Gay, these poor old raw-boned pacers with
bent knees and hobbles, pulling all on one rein, with any amount of
appliances to enable the man who was pulling for dear life to be able to
hold them, or else little rats of Iceland ponies shuffling along, and only
fit to be seen in a coster's barrow.

"And to think," cried Gay, in tragic tones, "that Carlton and I fancied
ourselves—our trotters, I mean!"

"Of course," said Rensslaer, "although speed is the first essential, I

will have no horse which is not absolutely sound, has not good manners,
and does not have to wear boots (except as a precaution against accident
when racing), and a light mouth."

Gay nodded. She had for the first time discovered how deceptive the
long, raking stride of a record trotter is, for without appearing to move
fast, he is yet making phenomenal time on the track, as drawing the light,
four-wheeled racing wagon with rubber-tyred bicycle wheels, he glides
smoothly along.

Then one by one, or in pairs, the finest animals in the stables were
shown. Yet with so little effort did horse after horse, team after team,
draw up under the trees in the background, and succeed each other, that
they only blended with the beauty of the landscape, did not disturb it,
and Gay presently gave a great sigh of delight.

"Oh," she said, "it's too much! I'd like the whole world to enjoy it—
it's too good for poor little me!"

"Well," said Rensslaer quietly, "it will—later."

It was a lovely day, with zephyr breezes—the great charm of it all

was, that there was nothing to suggest the circus or show ring, no crowd,
no betting, no shouting hoarse voices to break the peace, only splendid
animals full of fire, energy, and work, who were just going at their best
for sheer joy in life, joy in their own swiftness, strength and beauty,
delighted to run their race with the green sward underfoot, and the blue
sky overhead.

Rensslaer had made her free of a new and glorious world—the world
of horses, Chris's world. She longed for him to be there also, for though
she keenly appreciated the daintiness of these thoroughbreds, their
delicate legs and feet, the sheen of their satin coats, their perfection of
grace and movement, she yet felt that she was not sufficiently a
connoisseur to give to every point its full value, as Chris would so well
have known how to do.

"Getting ready for Olympia," said Rensslaer, as a thoroughbred

galloper was harnessed in a jogging cart, and accompanied the trotters at
a hard gallop, often being put to his utmost stretch to keep up with them,
after which Rensslaer showed her several "eighths" in 15 seconds, a two-
minute speed for a mile.
 "Just fancy if that dare-devil and Chris got together!" whispered Gay
when there rode out from beneath the trees a superb horseman, young,
cool as a cucumber, who, riding the centre horse, holding the two outside
ones, put them at an obstacle that they cleared like birds.

"He has broken every bone in his body," said Rensslaer grimly; "the
last time the doctor said it was his back, but he wouldn't admit it—and
here he is, you see!"

The boy gave them a taste of his quality when presently his horse
twice swerved aside from the jump, an American runabout luggage
wagon, but cleared it the third time—and once more Gay thought of
Chris, for the two men were alike in not knowing what fear was. The
resemblance between the two physically, struck her at once—each was
tall, and lean to a fault, each had the same dash and devilry, the same
indomitable pluck, each took an "outing" as part of the day's sport, and
with the fixed purpose to go on doing and daring, and as by a miracle
each had hitherto escaped the clutching hand of death, and flown beyond
its reach.

And yet—and yet, as Chris said, could one die better? She recalled
Robert Louis Stevenson's query, "And does not life go down with a better
grace, foaming in full body over a precipice, than miserably straggling
to an end in sandy deltas?"

Those two magnificent horsemen, Whyte Melville and Hughie Owen,

went out at the sport that they loved, and save for those whom they
loved, would they have wished to go any differently?

"I'm very proud of my jumpers," said Rensslaer, who was a keen

hunting man, getting in his six days a week during the winter. "That
horse"—he pointed one out—"was parted with by his former owner
because he could not jump, and since then, he has cleared six feet ten
inches high, and once a seven-feet jump. But the Belgians will win the
high-jumping competition at Olympia—Belgian officers easily out-jump
the world,"—and he related some notable feats of theirs, remarking with
great approval that they govern their horses by kindness. "As you do,"
thought Gay.

"That," said Rensslaer, as the handsome rider of a beautiful roan

gelding made his horse dance, and paw, and prance with extraordinary
perfection, in all the tricks of the Haute École, "is the best show rider in
Europe."

And so the "private view" went on, it was all quite effortless, and
apparently so unpremeditated, then presently, as she and Rensslaer
quietly chatted, Gay felt the peace accentuated, and glanced around.
They had the wide, lovely park to themselves; the distant trees, beneath
which had emerged the pick of the world's equine beauty, threw long
shadows on the sward only, and Rensslaer, glancing at his watch,
remarked that the Professor would think they were lost.

"Poor fellow! What he has missed!" said Gay, while Frank, wrapped
in ecstasy, was oblivious of time and place, of everything but having the
run of a treasure-house to which eternity itself could not enable him to
do full justice.

Rensslaer showed her the polo ground, and part of the steeplechase
course, two miles long, then proposed a visit to the stables that were so
completely invisible from the park or house. But now he turned sharply
to the side of the latter, and by a steep, winding path concealed among
trees, they emerged on the great quadrangle.

CHAPTER XXIV

AN EQUINE PARADISE

In striking contrast to the simplicity of Rensslaer's house was the

vastness of these outdoor belongings, where was celebrated the cult, the
worship, the very apotheosis of the horse, and yet the atmosphere was
one of rest; the sunlight slanted through the green boughs that overhung
the wall, the water sparkled in the centre, there were no signs of hurry,
and but few visible of the small army that served the beauties in their
stalls and loose boxes. There must be magnificent organisation here,
thought Gay, as she noted the noiseless, perfect machinery—when a man
was wanted, he sprang up, when not wanted, was not to be seen, and
without raising his voice, Rensslaer's orders were implicitly obeyed—
even for the "show" arranged that afternoon he had merely dropped a
few words to his stud groom, and the thing had gone by itself.

As she moved from horse to horse, each with his famous name on the
wall above, and below, a print of one equally famous, and in the centre, a
superb medallion in marble of a famous trotter going at full speed, Gay
admired the way they just turned their heads to look quietly at her, like
the true aristocrats that they were. But Rensslaer was another matter—
they knew him even better than he knew them, and manifested the most
lively pleasure when he called each by name.

"Look out!" he exclaimed, as Gay approached a veteran of twenty-one

years old, who was only retired for old age, after racing till he was nine,
getting a record at 2.15, and then being driven constantly hard on the
road till two years ago. "He won't let anyone but me go near him,"
explained his owner, "he bites everyone else. Each of these horses has
worn out five or six of the English carriage horses that did not have
nearly so hard a life"—and he explained that the American horse can do
the work of two hackneys, his legs being as hard as iron.

Amongst the old pensioners, (as their master had never sold a horse
that had done him good service) he showed Joe W., a horse seventeen
hands two inches high, who was nineteen years old. He had driven him
on the road twelve years, had raced, and only now retired him because he
was getting old, though his legs were still perfectly sound and he had
never been lame, except once from an overreach in a race. He had not
been coddled, but whenever he was driven on the road, was pelted along
at twenty miles an hour, however hard that road might be.

Only the pick of the horses were stabled there—about sixty were at a
place too far off for Gay to visit, and she got bewildered when she found
that the stable sheltered scores of horses collected from all points of the
compass—English hackneys, American, Russian, and Austrian trotters,
polo ponies, hunters, exhibition leaping horses, and harness ponies, but
Rensslaer did not go in much for steeplechasing, and for what was done,
the boy who had ridden just now, was responsible.

Gay sighed. What a little heaven to Chris, and what would not he and
that other boy do—a pair of dare-devils—if pitted against each other!
She dreaded, while she longed for him to know such bliss, and herein lay
her inconsistency—that she herself loved horses, was happiest near
them, yet would put a limit to Chris's far greater passion, as if it were to
be measured by rule of thumb!

It was in this spirit that she asked Rensslaer to get him down later, but
on no account to let him and the other boy meet, and Rensslaer laughed,
and promised. He had already decided on making Chris a certain offer,
and had great hopes that he might accept it.

Resuming their progress, he explained to Gay that his horses did one
thing only—the trotters only trotted, the jumpers only jumped, and the
horses went through special courses of medicine, and special courses of
food on a strict system. To train a horse so that he shall be both heavy
and fit, requires a refinement of training to which only the Americans
have attained, and at Elsinore the most elaborate system of discipline
was carried out, but in a kindly spirit, and the horse prepared for the life
he had to lead. He took her off to the breeding paddocks, that had a lot of
both American ex-champion trotting and "Pace and Action" mares, and
also prize hackney mares, all with foals by trotters and hackneys, his idea
being to breed, besides racing trotters, for racing on the Continent, show
horses which should have more speed and quality than the hackney,
whilst retaining their action, and to this end he crossed the American
trotter with the hackney.

"If my attempts to improve the English hackney by giving him some

of the pace and action of the fast trotting horse should be crowned with
success, I shall be satisfied," he told Gay, and he pointed out a foal that
looked like a thoroughbred, and moved like a trotter with hackney
action. In fact, most of these cross-bred foals looked the ideal carriage
horse—good whole colours, great quality, long necks, very high action,
great speed, and perfect manners, and there was never any difficulty in
breaking them. Then came an inspection of the racing sulkies, which had
an extra low seat so as to come round the turns better; then there were
the long-shaft sulkies for a horse who has high action, and makes the
ordinary sulky bob up and down, the jogging carts for exercising in, and
the four-wheeled, single-seated racing wagons, called speed wagons,
used by gentlemen driving in the States for Matinée or Amateur Trotting
races. This obviates the necessity of spreading the legs apart on each side
of the horse, and for some horses this does not diminish their speed, in
fact they can go faster in a wagon than in a sulky, in spite of the extra
weight, as it runs smoother, and does not hamper them.
 Rensslaer next took Gay to the outdoor training school, which is
specially designed for the education of jumpers, on the inner side of
which was a platform from which the attendants controlled them, and she
watched them run loose on the track, jumping heavy tree trunks, fences,
and other obstacles, and if they failed in their riderless freedom to clear
them, they gained experience in the tumble that ensued, which served
them well later.

She was shown how a horse is made familiar with the trials and the
terrors of the road, and is taught to understand them. A machine that
makes a noise like a score of motors all going at once, convinces the
animal that the hateful thing means no danger to him, and quick to take a
hint as his nature is, he approaches with confidence and freedom the
tasks he has to face in his curriculum, and is soon well-equipped to face
the emergencies of his career.

Then followed an extraordinary exhibition of skill in which Rensslaer

was evidently keenly interested, that consisted in the lassoing of a
supposed vicious horse by long reins held in the hands of the Haute
École rider, so that he is brought first to one knee, and then another, and
rendered helpless, and the lesson taught him that force is of no avail
against brains and cunning.

Gay sighed when at last they left the great quadrangle, steeped in the
peace of the evening hour, and visited the yard where choice Belgian
griffons and Pomeranians yelped in ecstatic chorus when Rensslaer
approached their kennels—yet much as Gay loved dogs, she could not
admire them like the beauties she had just left. Moreover, it was growing
late, and they entered the house.

When she had dug out the Professor, still dead to the world, and
asking nothing better than to remain dead, they had tea, and departed.

"Really a most remarkable individual, my dear," said the Professor,

for a man who could do all the varied things his host could, and yet have
the brains and taste to collect such books as the Professor had been
gloating over, was not to be met above once in a lifetime. "In his case,
success is not due to his wealth."

"In spite of it, you mean!" cried Gay. "If it's easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle, than a rich man to enter the kingdom of
heaven, it's a million times more difficult for him to live his own life, act
up to his ideals, and fulfil the genius that is in him. The world won't let
him as a rule."

"And to think that such a man as that should keep Trotters!" said the
Professor, who, if he thought at all of what Gay had been doing that
glorious June afternoon, concluded that she had enthused over something
a trifle better than the weedy specimens he had seen at Waterloo Park.

But Gay sat very still, thinking. She had found herself admitted to a
paradise hitherto undreamed of; it was as if, seeking a single diamond,
she had found a Golconda, and something of Chris's passion for horses
had been breathed into her ... they were so much, much more beautiful
than humans, more clever even in some respects ... with one-half of her
soul she worshipped, with the other half feared them, as the real rivals to
her happiness.

CHAPTER XXV

THE TUG-OF-WAR

Chris looked very white and thin, but just as smart as ever, and
completely unsubdued in spirit and intention, when he called in
Connaught Square one afternoon late in May, and found Gay in.

She looks prettier than ever, he thought, if less rounded than of yore,
and if he had expressed sorrow at causing her so much pain, Gay's tender
heart would instantly have melted, but for all his delight at seeing her, his
evident determination to treat his accident as a trifle not worth talking
about, put her back up to begin with. And when he unblushingly asked
her to condole with him on the number of good things he had missed,
and roundly abused the Professor and his understudy, for refusing him
permission to ride with an arm strapped to his side, Gay's patience gave
way utterly, and the first little rift within the lute made itself known.
 Poor Chris felt that coldness in the air, but had not the key to the
puzzle, and he could not make Gay out. Instead of the jolly little girl,
eager to hear all about his stable, to discuss his horses, his hopes and
future chances, to buck him up as she had so often done when things
went wrong, she did not seem to have a word to throw to him except
about trivial matters that didn't in the least interest him—or her, formerly.

How could he tell that those moments in which she saw his colours
closed in by a mêlée of struggling horses and men, had changed her from
a careless, happy-go-lucky girl, who laughed at accidents, had scarcely
flung a fear even to death, to a thoughtful woman whose outlook on life
would never again be quite the same? In a word, what he did before had
not mattered, but now that she knew she loved him, it did, yet this
solution never occurred to him, nor was there anything in her manner to
suggest it—quite the reverse, in fact.

He asked her a few questions about her horses, and what they had
done lately, as the papers did not always chronicle their doings, and she
told him of their failures and successes, quite without enthusiasm, and
Chris came to the conclusion that experience and Rensslaer combined,
had put her off Trotting. And if she did not tell him that her horses were
entered for no more fixtures after the end of June, and that her brief
connection with Trotting would altogether cease on her return from
abroad, Chris saw, clearly enough, that she took no more interest in the
sport into which she had so light-heartedly plunged, than she did in his.

If hitherto Gay's life had been regulated by a warm heart, high spirits,
and quick wits, he knew that it was so no longer, and resented the change
in her. Sunbeams might not fulfil any recognised place in the scheme of
creation, but they were delightful all the same, and he had been quite
satisfied with her as she was. If he had only known it, she loved him at
that moment more than ever, realising now she was with him, how
completely he had spoiled her for everyone else, that he was the one
companion of whom she never tired, never could tire.

"Frank and I are going abroad early in July," she said presently, and
Chris's face lengthened. Steeplechasing was over for the year, and until
he began to train his horses at the end of August, there was only the flat
racing he despised, very seldom took the trouble to look at—and now
Gay, on whose precious company he had counted, was going away in a
little more than a month.

"I shan't be riding again till autumn, worse luck," he said. "And I'm
too late for Olympia."

Gay looked at him, half-angry, half-reluctantly admiring—here he

was, a mere gaunt shadow of himself, after the worst outing he had ever
had, with only one longing—to court another!

Chris was very sensitive, and his hatred of talking about himself was
only equalled by his horror of being a bore. So although the change in
her manner hurt him more than either he or she knew, he abruptly
changed the subject.

"You'll let me escort you to your meetings now, with Lossie, of

course," he added grudgingly. "Tom Bulteel will be jolly glad to be off
duty, I expect."

"And Effie too," said Gay candidly. "She did detest coming with me
so, but they both played up splendidly, even if Tom's temper has been
perfectly horrid."

"And where is this wonderful Gold Vase?" said Chris, looking at the
centre of the carpet as if he expected to see it installed there as tutelary
god.

"Oh, I hate it!" cried poor Gay, with tears in her voice. "It's covered
over with a piece of sackcloth—I mean silk—in my den. It was won by a
fraud—paid for with Carlton's good name—the great mistake was his
thinking I'd value anything bought at such a cost."

"He never expected that brute to follow him up and see the toe-
weights trick," said Chris consolingly. "Honest men can't play the rogue,
and that's about all there is to it. Heard from him lately?"

"He is doing a cure at Aix—for the sake of the scenery, you know!"
she laughed. "I have had some cheerful, gossiping letters from him," and
Chris nodded carelessly, as at a matter of no interest to either. Mackrell
had played the fool, and must take the consequences.
 Then there was a horrid pause—a pause between these two who
usually chattered like magpies when they got together!

"I made a scrap-book out of the snapshots and sketches of you," said
Chris, rather gravely. "By a moderate computation there are somewhere
about thirty, and I divided them into groups—the decent"—he hesitated
—"the—not nice—and the positively libellous."

Gay coloured warmly. If her escapade had brought her a succès de

scandal, caused her to be surrounded wherever she went in public, and
make acquaintances faster than she wanted, she knew well enough the
subtle difference in men's manners towards her, since she had courted
publicity.

"It wasn't such a very awful thing to do, really," she said, with a
rebellious toss of her red-brown head. "It was only those spiteful
wretches made it look bad."

"I'd rather see a picture of you as you look now," said Chris quietly,
and Gay blushed again, the gentlest of reproofs always hit her hard.

"You see, Chris," she said earnestly, "I had always longed to drive
myself—I had had two trial spins in private—and when I saw my driver
was tight at the critical moment, of course I ought to have asked Mr.
Rensslaer to take his place, but the temptation was too irresistible, and,
of course, I fell."

"So, apparently, did one of the competitors," said Chris; "broke an

arm or leg, didn't he? So, you see, Trotting people can have accidents as
well as jockeys."

Gay reluctantly admitted the fact.

"Of course," she said, "such a fall may be anything from a scratched
face up to being killed—one of Mr. Rensslaer's drivers had just such a
fall, not from hobbles, but from the track being badly made, and the man
did not hurt himself a bit, but he has known a man killed by it. Still, you
may say that of every sport. Take hunting—"

"Oh, Lord," cried Chris, "don't compare our national pastime with
Trotting, please!"
 But Gay affected not to hear. "I can quite understand a man being
fond of riding, or even of 'riding jolly,'" she said severely. "Our
forefathers did—and on considerably more jumping powder than in these
almost Spartan days—and it must be a lovely feeling that everything is
plain sailing, that neither you nor your horse are capable of making a
mistake—in that heavenly state of mind you do remarkable things over
and over again that you never could do in cold blood—but that is quite a
different thing to steeplechasing!"

"Quite," agreed Chris in a tone that made Gay turn away indignantly,
thinking of Carlton, and what he had not hesitated to do for her. Yes,
Chris was certainly doing his best to throw her into his absent rival's
arms, while on the other hand he was cut to the heart by her reception of
him, so utterly different to the one for which during long weeks of pain
he had longed.

Unconsciously, he had looked for a little of that "mothering" that the

best kind of woman knows how to give the man she loves, when in
trouble, but Chris's pride was more than equal to his tenderness of heart,
and he gave no sign of his wound.

"Mr. Rensslaer has asked us over to his place at Vienna—he is going

to let me drive one of his Trotters for him. After all," cried Gay,
becoming only the more rebellious under Chris's grave looks—Chris the
gay-hearted, whom she had confidently reckoned on to think her right
whatever she did—"why should a thing that is right in Vienna, be wrong
in England?"

"In Rome," murmured Chris vaguely, "you must do as the 'Rum-uns'

do."

"Oh," cried Gay impatiently, "we know that vice and virtue are
matters of climate and colour, that what is right in the east, is wrong in
the west, and it's the same with Trotting—if I am satirised in England, I
shall make up for it in the encouragement and respect I shall get abroad!"

She jumped up, and fetched some large photographs that represented
an attractive girl driving one of Rensslaer's trotters, and Chris mentally
compared this modest presentment of a modest woman, in an elegant
conveyance, with the fiendish cleverness of a sketch representing Gay
perched upon a shining skeleton wagon, with a charming leg stretched
along a shaft on either side of it.

"You're too good for it, Gay," he said, "either there or here. Rensslaer
is right—there is no future for Trotting under present conditions in
England."

Gay shrugged her shoulders, and abruptly, contemptuously even,

changed the subject.

"I am looking forward tremendously to Olympia," she said, "aren't

you?"

"I suppose the jumping will be all right. I hear the fences are to be
very much higher than any seen before in other shows in England, that
gentlemen are to ride instead of stable-boys, is good."

There was a note in his voice that made Gay sigh impatiently, and turn
her head away; here was the ruling idea, strong in death, or what was
very near it.

"Rensslaer must have his hands full," said Chris. "Awfully decent
chap—he has looked me up several times." He did not say that he had
encouraged him, as bringing news of Gay.

"Oh, he's delightful," said she as tea appeared, and she began to pour
it out. "His naïveté, his tremendous natural ability, whether he's revolver-
shooting, or writing a play, or modelling, or driving Trotters, or judging
horses, or nursing a cat, or taking a lot of trouble about a silly girl like
me and my stupid fancies, there's no one like him!"

But Chris was not jealous, though some men might have
misunderstood Gay's intense admiration of Rensslaer's genius and many-
sidedness, and the pleasure his friendship had clearly brought into her
life.

"You know the papers have engaged you to him?" he said, and
thought of an extremely uncomplimentary snapshot of Rensslaer,
crouched low on his seat, and made ferocious by his huge goggles,
published in the papers side by side with Gay.
 "Why?" she said incredulously. "Do you suppose that a man like that
would care for a silly little ignoramus like me?"

"Men hate brains," said Chris grumpily, and his temper was not
improved by being told that it was only boys who did.

"He wants you to go down to Elsinore," said Gay. "Oh, Chris, the
peace of that great quadrangle—the luxury of those stables that yet
compass the most perfect simplicity of service to those beautiful
creatures—you'll be like a boy in a sweet-shop, running about from one
joy to another and loth to leave any. To run through his hundred or so of
horses, will take you approximately, I should say, a year of undulterated
bliss!"

"I don't know that his stable will interest me so much," objected
Chris. "You see, he doesn't go in for steeplechasing—it's driving he's
great at."

"Why, he loves his horses," cried Gay indignantly. "It's his

humanising influence in the stable—loving the dear beasts, not for what
they do, and the money to be made out of them, but for what they are—
that's so lovely."

Chris sighed. To love horses, and live among the world's pick of them
as Rensslaer did, was a lot that the most fortunate man alive might envy.

"Chris?"

"Yes?"

"Aunt Lavinia has been a great comfort to me while you were laid
up." Chris smiled—it was a sign of grace in her that she had need of
comforting.

"I didn't know till she told me—how—how charitable you are. No
wonder you're always hard up, when you give away most of your
winnings in helping poor, wretched people!"

Chris coloured.

"I don't," he said. "Aunt Lavinia has been pulling your leg."
 "Has it ever struck you that I am very selfish?" inquired Gay
anxiously.

"Often—about not making me happy. And it would be so easy, and so

—er—so pleasant," said Chris, with the lines that meant mischief
wrinkling his young eyes.

"You know," said Gay hastily, "somehow my ambitions seem common

to me when I look at that dear little lady, who lives entirely for others,
and I question my right to waste money as I do on Trotting and
otherwise. Oh, I'm not a Socialist"—

"I should hope not," said Chris significantly. "It just means that you
make another man work for you while you idle, and then curse him
because he does not make enough to give you luxuries."

"Oh, I'm idle enough," said Gay remorsefully, "but I do feel a burning
desire to see the rich enjoy less, and the poor and unfortunate suffer less,
and I know perfectly well that I ought to sell my horses—

"They wouldn't fetch much," said Chris, chuckling unkindly. "But

there's nothing I'd enjoy more than putting 'em up at Tattersall's—if
they're good enough for Tat's."

Gay turned very white, and a flash like steel came into her grey eyes
—few people had ever seen it, but it meant mischief.

"And I to see you put up yours," she said quietly. "When you drop
racing, Chris, you may talk to me about Trotting—not before."

Chris too had turned very pale, he understood now. He was to tear out
what was in the very blood and fibre of him—what had been in countless
generations of his hard-riding, sporting forefathers...

"You ask me for my very life itself," he said heavily. "Even my

mother never asked me that impossibility. She placed my deep happiness
in riding before her own peace of mind always."

Yes, his mother had known how to love him better than that.... He
must possess great qualities to love, and be so beloved by his mother,
that their love went on, unbroken even by death. After all, Gay asked
herself, was it not she who was selfish, not he?

Had Chris but looked at her in that moment of insight, of revelation,

each might have been spared much sorrow, but he was staring straight
before him, his face set and stern at the impasse to which he and Gay had
come—he thought he knew now the real reason why she had refused him
at the Ffolliott's dance.

At that pregnant moment the door opened slowly, and a timid face
came round the corner, like a rabbit peering from a burrow; since Min
Toplady's visit, the Professor always looked first to see if Lossie were
there, before entering.

"Are you alone, my dear? Ah, only Chris, I see," and the Professor
came forward, and shook his 'case's' hand warmly. If only the boy could
be weaned from steeplechasing, there was no one he would like better
for a brother-in-law, though of course it must be a long—a very long
engagement.

"I wish," he said presently to Chris in his tactless way, "that you
would persuade Gay to listen to reason, and give up Trotting."

"He had better get the whip-hand of himself before he tries to manage
others," cried Gay; then looking at Chris, white, wasted, invincible in his
weakness, her heart was pierced with cruel pain. He looked like slipping
through, without the help of any more accidents, and what would life be
worth to her without him?

As she moved to the window, and stood looking out, she lived again
those awful moments at Sandown, yet when she came back to the two
men, her face told nothing, for if Chris had pluck, she had grit, and the
latter wears best in the long run.

"Each to its own, Heron," she said—"you to your books and

microscope, Chris to his racers, and I to my Trotters; there isn't a pin to
choose between the selfishness of any one or us!"

And Chris, when presently he said good-bye, thought grimly that she
was about right.
 CHAPTER XXVI

CARLTON'S "LITTLE BILL"

It was characteristic of Carlton Mackrell that he should turn up

unexpectedly in the Park one afternoon, looking his usual unruffled self,
and greet the little party sitting under a tree, as if he had only parted from
them a few hours earlier.

No thought of the presentation of his "little bill" cooled the warmth of

Gay's welcome; Lossie paid him the tribute of nearly fainting from
excess of joy, while Chris, who knew his only real rival with Gay to be
his own passion for steeplechasing, was cordiality itself.

It was one of the few sunny afternoons in a summer that was the very
abomination of desolation, and Carlton, who looked very brown and
well, was clearly glad to be back in the world—his world, that never
enthused, or got excited, or asked questions, but took everything for
granted in its own delightful way. He liked its indifference to the non-
essentials of social intercourse, its tranquility and spacious forgiving
humours, its freedom from conventions, and disdain for little things—
yes, with all its charms and vices, English society alone had the art of
life. Even Rensslaer, who was a cosmopolitan in his tastes and habits,
had once admitted to Carlton that he had made his home in England
because, as he frankly confessed, London had his heart.

"When I am here, I always feel that I am at the centre of things—right

at the heart of all there's happening," he said. "You don't feel this in any
other city in the world—but London is the whole world itself, squeezed
into a few square miles."

Gay, if she were nervous, did not suffer it to appear, but chaffed
Carlton mercilessly about his rheumatism, inquiring if he had found its
cure at the Aix gaming tables, and in those dolce far niente drives on the
old Roman roads that she herself adored.
 He laughed, looking very happy, and very handsome—indeed the
quartette were in such high spirits, and of such conspicuous good looks,
as to attract an unusual amount of attention, Gay heard one woman
murmur in passing them, "three angels—and an Immortal," the latter
with a glance at Chris that sent a pang to her heart.

Carlton was genuinely shocked at Chris's looks (for which Gay was
almost as much responsible as his accident), but delighted to find that
there was no understanding between the two. Daily during his stay
abroad he had expected to hear the news of their engagement, and if
nothing had happened in all these weeks, well, the presumption was, that
nothing would.

It wanted a good week to the Horse Show; town was at its very best,
and Gay, who was always restless now, gave her whole mind to frivolity,
greatly to Lossie's delight. The four young people filled the days, and the
greater part of their nights, with amusements of every kind, so that, as
the Professor declared, Gay only used her house to sleep in, seldom to
feed.

With two of the party happy, for Lossie was in triumphant beauty, and
quite satisfied at the way things were going, and the other two playing up
brilliantly, they made the gayest possible quartette, and more than once,
either as host or guest, Rensslaer joined them, to Gay's manifest
pleasure.

It was not surprising that Carlton quite wrongly attributed Gay's

welcome change of front about trotting, to Rensslaer's influence, for
although that sport was the one tabooed subject with them all, he knew
from Tugwood, who had insisted on keeping him well posted, that she
seldom took the trouble to see her horses run now.

But he was equally correct in thinking that her friendship with

Rensslaer had developed a side of her character that up to now, no one
had been aware of, and with some mortification realised, that neither he
nor Chris had allowed for the spirituality that is in every woman worthy
of the name, and that Rensslaer so fully recognised.

While just as original, Gay had wider sympathies, read more, thought
more, and that she had a very genuine and even warm affection for
Rensslaer, no one could doubt who saw them together. She displayed an
eager pleasure when they met, that neither of the two younger men by
any means evoked—it happened, therefore, that Carlton came to entirely
misunderstand the position, be as certain that the man was in love with
Gay (for a lover always thinks the whole world is in league to want what
he wants), as he suspected Gay, out of sheer perversity, to fancy herself
in love with Rensslaer.

With men of Carlton Mackrell's type and position, brains are never
admitted, or if possessed, they are sedulously hidden—it would be bad
form, make uncomfortable other men to use them, and he had never
seriously considered their value till now, when he saw the mental hold
that Rensslaer had taken on her. But the more complex a man is, the
better he likes a woman to be purely normal, and like Chris, Carlton by
no means approved of the change in Gay.

He thought of the sweet perfume of the wild hawthorn, of how the

cultivated, double variety, beautiful in shape and colour though it may
be, has none, and he missed the wildness and spontaneity, yes, and the
wilfulness that he loved in Gay, and longed to have it back again.

It was curious with what jealous iteration in conversation between

Carlton and Lossie, Rensslaer's name cropped up, and that the man
should display such incredible blindness to the real position of affairs
between Gay and Chris, appealed to Lossie's sense of humour. She only
bided her time to undeceive him, and the opportunity came at Ranelagh
on the Saturday preceding the opening of the Horse Show, when
somehow the two couples had got separated, as often happened. It was a
significant fact which seemed altogether to escape Carlton, that uneasy
as Gay and Chris seemed to be when together, it was impossible to keep
them apart.

Sitting under the trees, Carlton and Lossie talked trifles till, as was
inevitable, Rensslaer's (to Carlton) abhorred personality intruded, and the
reason of his influence over Gay was debated.

"I can't see his charm," said Carlton, who, like many other very
handsome men, quite unconsciously exaggerated the power of good
looks over women.

"He's got a mind," said Lossie significantly, "and that lasts longest in
the long run."
 "So has Gay," said Carlton, "and that is the point d'appui between
them. She could never put up with poor Hannen, who has but one idea in
his head—horses."

"He has one other," she said quietly—"Gay. And Gay has only one—
Chris."

A red flush showed under Carlton's dark skin, and he looked at Lossie
sharply, suspecting her of playing her own game, but if there is one thing
more than another that confounds a man, it is the purity of the outline of
a woman's cheek, as opposed to the deep artifice and dissimulation of her
soul.

"They are à tort et à travers!" he exclaimed. "It's only because there is

no steeplechasing on, and Hannen is at a loose end, that he sticks it."

"She would marry him to-morrow if he would give up racing," said

Lossie, "and he won't. Neither will give way—and there's the rub. And
she's a fool," she added softly, "for a woman who loves, loves to submit."

"Gay won't," said Carlton, as he returned Lossie's gaze full. Good

Heavens! how lovely she was, with her forget-me-not eyes, and silky
masses of blue-black hair, framed in a wonderful hat and gown of royal
purplish-blue chiffon, that would have killed most women. He wondered
that Rensslaer had passed her by for Gay; for himself, of course, it was
different—he knew Gay's good qualities so well, her disposition inside
out.

"Gay has a will of her own," he said.

"And a heart," said Lossie significantly, "that runs away with her
head. You see, Chris looks so ill, and you so—so provokingly well—"
Her gaze lingered on his face warmly like a caress, and indeed he was
very good to look at. "There's something awfully maternal about Gay—
not to say 'sloppy'—wanting to help everyone, like silly Aunt Lavinia,
you know. It makes you so cheap," she addedly rashly, and saw her
mistake when Carlton, who liked Lavinia—as who did not?—frowned,
and suggested that they should join the others.

They found them silently looking on at a game of polo—if there were

a horse anywhere near, Chris gravitated naturally towards it—and for a
while they discussed the players and the cattle.

"But Mr. Hannen will see better at Elsinore to-morrow," Gay said to
Carlton a little nervously. Each day, each hour seemed to bring nearer to
her the presentation of that "little bill," and there was a dangerous spark
in his eye that foretold trouble in the near future. Indeed, as they stood
quietly chatting about the wonders of Elsinore, Carlton suddenly realised
that Lossie had told him the truth, and with a mad, hot rush of jealousy,
that for the moment blinded him to all sense of honour, he inly swore
that he would obtain Gay at all hazards, her love for Chris
notwithstanding, using the steeplechase difficulty as a means of
accomplishing his desires.

Lossie, reading him like a book, felt her heart sink. Yet, after all,
would it not be better when he had put his fate to the touch, and realised
once for all that Gay was not for him? He would take it badly—very
badly. He would go away again, but some day he would come back—and
even if he knew that she loved him, Lossie had not committed the one
sin that to a man is unpardonable, the sin of boring him.

CHAPTER XXVII

A MODUS VIVENDI

Chris returned from Elsinore decidedly quiet, not to say subdued in

manner. Gay thought it was because in the enchanted world of horses he
had entered there, the steeplechaser found his true level, was only one of
many, not the be-all and end-all of existence; she also concluded that
Rensslaer had kept the dare-devil young rider, who had given Gay a taste
of his jumping capacity, out of sight, as indeed he had. Oddly enough,
Chris seemed more struck with Rensslaer's personality and marvellous
shooting, than anything else, and waxed eloquent when he reported to
Gay at dinner that night, all he had seen and done during the day.

"He's a fine chap," said Chris, "and a good sportsman—does some

good with his money. By Jove! you should just see him shoot on