oved hand on the horse's
lather-flecked neck. The Ambler tossed his head and turned it away.

George came out into the open, and made his way towards the Stand. His
trainer's words had instilled a drop of poison into his cup. "A goldmine
given away!"

He went up to Swells. On his lips were the words: "What made you give
the show away like that?" He did not speak them, for in his soul he felt
it would not become him to ask his jockey why he had not dissembled and
won by a length. But the little jockey understood at once.

"Mr. Blacksmith's been at me, sir. You take my tip: he's a queer one,
that 'orse. I thought it best to let him run his own race. Mark my
words, he knows what's what. When they're like that, they're best let
alone."

A voice behind him said:

"Well, George, congratulate you! Not the way I should have ridden the
race myself. He should have lain off to the distance. Remarkable turn of
speed that horse. There's no riding nowadays!"

The Squire and General Pendyce were standing there. Erect and slim,
unlike and yet so very much alike, the eyes of both of them seemed
saying:

'I shall differ from you; there are no two opinions about it. I shall
differ from you!'

Behind them stood Mrs. Bellew. Her eyes could not keep still under their
lashes, and their light and colour changed continually. George walked on
slowly at her side. There was a look of triumph and softness about her;
the colour kept deepening in her cheeks, her figure swayed. They did not
look at each other.

Against the Paddock railings stood a man in riding-clothes, of spare
figure, with a horseman's square, high shoulders, and thin long legs a
trifle bowed. His narrow, thin-lipped, freckled face, with close-cropped
sandy hair and clipped red moustache, was of a strange dead pallor.
He followed the figures of George and his companion with little fiery
dark-brown eyes, in which devils seemed to dance. Someone tapped him on
the arm.

"Hallo, Bellew! had a good race?"

"Devil take you, no! Come and have a drink?"

Still without looking at each other, George and Mrs. Bellew walked
towards the gate.

"I don't want to see any more," she said. "I should like to get away at
once."

"We'll go after this race," said George. "There's nothing running in the
last."

At the back of the Grand Stand, in the midst of all the hurrying crowd,
he stopped.

"Helen?" he said.

Mrs. Bellew raised her eyes and looked full into his.

Long and cr