With which reflection and a satisfied smile upon his lips, Mostyn retired to bed.
"Well, all I can say is I hope you'll stick to the arrangement of being just friends," Pierce grumbled when, the next day, Mostyn told him of the letter he had received, and how he had answered it—answered it, perhaps, with a little more enthusiasm than Pierce altogether cared for, explaining that he was looking forward to the day when he could return to Partinborough Grange. This, however, could not be for a week or so, Mostyn had added, at any rate not till after Goodwood. But the Cesarewitch was bound to bring him to Newmarket. "Just the race that's going to mean so much for us," Pierce commented with a sigh.
"Don't be afraid, old man," laughed Mostyn, who was happier that day than Pierce had seen him since his arrival in London—a bad omen, the latter argued. "I give you my word that I'll put the Cesarewitch before everything else. Rada doesn't want to be bothered, and I won't bother her."
And with this promise Pierce was constrained to be content.
The days passed, and, as they had anticipated, their first essay—for the Royal Hunt Cup—met with most indifferent success; they had, indeed, been quite confident of failure long before the day of the race.
The same fate befell them, just as "Old Rory" had predicted, at Goodwood, and later on, at the St. Leger. The latter race cost Mostyn a good deal of money. The only animal that he had been able to secure was a dark horse from the Manton stables, which, for various reasons, could not be trained earlier in the year, and was thought to have some chance. He proved an expensive bargain, and came in with the ruck. The actual race was, as had been foretold, a struggle between Hipponous and Peveril. These two horses fought out their battle a second time, and the Doncaster course suited the chestnut even better than that of Epsom. Once more Sir Roderick MacPhane secured a victory.
These defeats having been anticipated, neither Mostyn nor Pierce were in any way discouraged; on the contrary, they were all agog with excitement, for the day of the Cesarewitch was approaching, and for this race they had secured a horse through the kind offices of Sir Roderick, who had remembered his promise, with which they hoped to do wonders.
Gulliver, the horse in question, came of an irreproachable pedigree, and could already boast of a good record. He had run third the previous year, and was only carrying seven pounds more than on the former occasion. Indeed, under the training of old Treves, to whom Mostyn had naturally sent him, Gulliver soon become a hot favourite for the Cesarewitch.
Of course, by this time Mostyn and Rada had met again, not once but many times. Gulliver being in the charge of Treves at Partinborough, there was nothing to be wondered at in Mostyn running up and down between London and his country home. Certainly his visits to the Grange were brief, but then Pierce was always at his elbow to hurry him away. Mostyn sighed but obeyed. His life seemed to be compounded of long railway journeys all over the country; he had even been dragged to Dublin for the Horse Show, and on another occasion he had journeyed to Paris to view some horses which had been particularly recommended to him.
He was beginning to be talked about; the sporting papers were taking notice of his name. His face had become a familiar one upon the racecourse. A little later, unless he attained his object either at the Cesarewitch or Cambridgeshire, he knew quite well that he was bound to become an object of general curiosity, a young man who was throwing himself wildly into the track of the spendthrift, the way many had gone before him, those who foolishly dissipated fortunes on the Turf. But then, of course, the world did not know, and, after all, it mattered very little to him what the world should say. Let it be clearly stated here that, apart from his genuine love of sport, Mostyn took no pleasure in the apparently reckless course to which he was pledged. He did not bet. His object was to achieve the task which had been set him as quickly as possible, and then to take up the position of the man who went in for racing reasonably, with discretion and without the inordinate passion of the gambler.