t, but turning and
twisting it he could breathe the warmth of the woman he loved. In bending
over the embroidery he touched Mrs. Bellew's shoulder; it was not drawn
away, a faint pressure seemed to answer his own. His mother's voice
recalled him:

"Oh, my needle, dear! It's so sweet of you, but perhaps"

George handed back the embroidery. Mrs. Pendyce received it with a
grateful look. It was the first time he had ever shown an interest in
her work.

Mrs. Bellew had taken up a palm-leaf fan to screen her face from the
fire. She said slowly:

"If we win to-morrow I'll embroider you something, George."

"And if we lose?"

Mrs. Bellew raised her eyes, and involuntarily George moved so that his
mother could not see the sort of slow mesmerism that was in them.

"If we lose," she said, "I shall sink into the earth. We must win,
George."

He gave an uneasy little laugh, and glanced quickly at his mother. Mrs.
Pendyce had begun to draw her needle in and out with a half-startled look
on her face.

"That's a most haunting little song you sang, dear," she said.

Mrs. Bellew answered: "The words are so true, aren't they?"

George felt her eyes on him, and tried to look at her, but those
half-smiling, half-threatening eyes seemed to twist and turn him about as
his hands had twisted and turned about his mother's embroidery. Again
across Mrs. Pendyce's face flitted that half-startled look.

Suddenly General Pendyce's voice was heard saying very loud, "Stale?
Nonsense, Bee, nonsense! Why, damme, so it is!"

A hum of voices from the centre of the room covered up that outburst, and
Gerald, stepping to the hearth, threw another cedar log upon the fire.
The smoke came out in a puff.

Mrs. Pendyce leaned back in her chair smiling, and wrinkling her fine,
thin nose.

"Delicious!" she said, but her eyes did not leave her son's face, and in
them was still that vague alarm.

CHAPTER IV

THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUND

Of all the places where, by a judicious admixture of whip and spur, oats
and whisky, horses are caused to place one leg before another with
unnecessary rapidity, in order that men may exchange little pieces of
metal with the greater freedom, Newmarket Heath is "the topmost, and
merriest, and best."

This museum of the state of flux--the secret reason of horse-racing being
to afford an example of perpetual motion (no proper racing-man having
ever been found to regard either gains or losses in the li