Did you ever go to a gentleman-rider race where the
jocks were not at least an hour behind time, and considered themselves,
on the whole, very tolerably punctual? At last, however, he sauntered
into the dressing-shed, and was aided by Rake into tops that had at
length achieved a spotless triumph, and the scarlet gold-embroidered
jacket of his fair friend's art, with white hoops and the "Coeur
Vaillant se fait Royaume" on the collar, and the white, gleaming sash to
be worn across it, fringed by the same fair hands with silver.
Meanwhile the "welsher," driven off the course by a hooting and
indignant crowd, shaking the water from his clothes, with bitter oaths,
and livid with a deadly passion at his exile from the harvest-field
of his lawless gleanings, went his way, with a savage vow of vengeance
against the "d----d dandy," the "Guards' swell," who had shown him up
before the world as the scoundrel he was.
The bell was clanging and clashing passionately, as Cecil at last went
down to the weights, all his friends of the Household about him, and
all standing "crushers" on their champion, for their stringent esprit de
corps was involved, and the Guards are never backward in putting their
gold down, as all the world knows. In the inclosure, the cynosure
of devouring eyes, stood the King, with the sangfroid of a superb
gentleman, amid the clamor raging round him, one delicate ear laid
back now and them, but otherwise indifferent to the din; with his coat
glistening like satin, the beautiful tracery of vein and muscle, like
the veins of vine-leaves, standing out on the glossy, clear-carved neck
that had the arch of Circassia, and his dark, antelope eyes gazing with
a gentle, pensive earnestness on the shouting crowd.
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