Captain Willy Forrest admitted that he had few virtues, but he never charged himself with the vice of idleness. In town or out of it, his trim man-servant, Abel, would wake him at seven o'clock and see that he had a cup of tea and the morning papers by a quarter-past. Fine physical condition was one of the ambitions of this lithe shapely person, whose father had been a jockey and whose mother had not forgotten to the day of her death the manner in which measurements are taken upon a counter.
Willy Forrest, by dint of perseverance, had really come to believe that these worthy parents never existed but in his imagination. To the world he was the second son of the late Sir John Forrest, Bart., whose first-born, supposed to be in Africa, had remained beyond the pale for many years. Society, which rarely questions pleasant people, took him at his word and opened many doors to him. In short, he was a type of adventurer by no means uncommon, and rarely unsuccessful when there are brains to back the pretensions.
He was not a particularly evil rascal, and women found him charming. Possessed of a merry face, a horsey manner and a vocabulary which would have delighted a maker of slang dictionaries, he pushed his my everywhere, not hoping for something to turn up, but determined that his own cleverness should contrive that desirable arrival. When he met Anna Gessner at Ascot a year ago, the propitious moment seemed at hand. "The girl is a gambler to her very boots," he told himself, while he reflected that a seat upon the box of such a family coach would certainly make his fortune. Willy Forrest resolved to secure such a seat without a moment's loss of time.
This determination taken, the ardor with which he pursued it was surprising. A cunning fox-like instinct led him to read Anna Gessner's character as few others who had known her. Believing greatly in the gospel of heredity, he perceived that Anna owed much to her father and more to her nationality. "She is selfish and passionate, a little devil in single harness who would be worse in double"--this was his reading of her; to which he added the firm resolution to put the matter to the proof without loss of time.
"I shall weigh in immediately and the weights will be light," he thought. "She likes a bit of a flutter and I'll see that she gets it. There is plenty of corn in the old man's manger, and if it comes to bursting the bag, I will carry home the pieces. There's where I drive the car. She shall play and I will be her pet lamb. Great Jupiter, what a catch!"