The Salt Of The Earth by Fred M. White

The house party rolled back to Callader Castle in high good humor. It had been a veritable backers' day at Rokeby Park, and they all returned with a great deal more money than they started with. Besides, it was pleasant to contemplate one's shrewdness, and to be assured that, for once, at all events, one had got the better of what one called the 'pencillers.' They dashed to the hall door in carriages and motors, and the women clamored for tea. The Duchess of Southampton was as unlike the wearer of the traditional strawberry leaves of fiction as it was possible to imagine. For her grace was short and stout, not to say muscular. She was dressed in the plainest of plain Norfolk jackets, her skirt was short, and her well-polished brown boots eminently serviceable. She wore a grey Trilby hat tilted to the side of her head, and a beautifully tied stock ornamented with a diamond horse-shoe pin. Her good-humored face was round and red, and her very hair was cut short like a man's. To use her own breezy expression, she had been reared in a racing stable, and in her heart of hearts the stud books and the racing calendar were far more important than Debrett.

But, nevertheless, she came of a remarkably good stock, and though her manners were free to the verge of familiarity, she never forgot herself or her position, as many a parvenu could tell. She viewed her present companions with good-natured contempt. Her opinion of Mark Callader she never disguised. But then, he was a Callader, and that counted for a great deal.