His rivals, too, were beyond par in fitness and in condition, and
there were magnificent animals among them. Bay Regent was a huge raking
chestnut, upward of sixteen hands, and enormously powerful, with very
fine shoulders, and an all-over-like-going head; he belonged to a
Colonel in the Rifles, but was to be ridden by Jimmy Delmar of the 10th
Lancers, whose colors were violet with orange hoops. Montacute's
horse, Pas de Charge, which carried all the money of the Heavy
Cavalry,--Montacute himself being in the Dragoon Guards,--was of much
the same order; a black hunter with racing-blood in his loins and
withers that assured any amount of force, and no fault but that of a
rather coarse head, traceable to a slur on his 'scutcheon on the distaff
side from a plebeian great-grandmother, who had been a cart mare, the
only stain on his otherwise faultless pedigree. However, she had given
him her massive shoulders, so that he was in some sense a gainer by her,
after all. Wild Geranium was a beautiful creature enough: a bright bay
Irish mare, with that rich red gloss that is like the glow of a horse
chestnut; very perfect in shape, though a trifle light perhaps, and with
not quite strength enough in neck or barrel; she would jump the fences
of her own paddock half a dozen times a day for sheer amusement, and was
game for anything[*]. She was entered by Cartouche of the Enniskillens,
to be ridden by "Baby Grafton," of the same corps, a feather-weight,
and quite a boy, but with plenty of science in him.
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