me--and me!' clamour a score of pencillers, who come
clustering up. 'Done with you, and you, and you'--the
bets are booked as freely as offered. 'And now, my lord,
if you've a mind for a bit more, I'll take you
thirty-five hundred to two thousand.' 'And so you shall!'
is the cheery answer, as the backer expands under the
genial influence of the biggest bet of the day. Then,
with their seventies to forties, and seven ponies to
four, the smaller fry are duly enregistered, and the
Marquess wheels his hack, his escort gathers round him,
and away they dash."

Such was the splendid, reckless fashion in which the Marquess would
fling about his wagers until he frequently stood to win or lose £50,000
on a single race. If he had always kept his head under the intoxication
of this wild gambling he might perhaps have made another fortune equal
to that he had inherited. But his wagering was as erratic as himself,
and his gains were punctuated by heavy losses which began to make
inroads on even his enormous resources.

The first crushing blow fell on that memorable day when Hermit struggled
through a blinding snowstorm first past the post in the Derby of 1867,
to the open-mouthed amazement of every looker on; for Mr Chaplin's colt
had been considered so hopeless that odds of forty to one were freely
laid against him.

Hermit's sensational victory was the climax of a singular and romantic
story. Three years earlier Lady Florence Paget, daughter of the second
Marquess of Anglesey, had been the affianced bride of Mr Henry Chaplin,
who was passionately devoted to her, little dreaming that another had