“No, I’m not,” she shrilled out. “I lied, just to get in to see you!”
“And you’ve put your money on this Duke of Kendall?”
“Every cent I own—every cent! If I lose it—oh—It will kill me to lose it!”
“But what the devil did you come here for?”
“Because I am desperate! I’ve—I’ve—”
“Now, don’t spoil those lovely eyes by crying this way, honey-girl! What would I get if I told you something about that race this afternoon?”
“Oh, I’d give you anything!” she cried, almost drunkenly, snatching some belated hope from the change in his tone.
“Do you mean that?” he demanded suddenly, stepping back and looking at her from under his shaggy brows.
“No—no, not that,” she gasped quickly, in terror, for then, and then only, did she catch an inkling of his meaning. She felt that she had floundered into a quagmire of pollution, and that the more fiercely she struggled and fought, the more stained with its tainted waters she was destined to remain.
She was afraid to look up at the crafty, sunburnt, animal-like face before her, with its wrinkles about the heavy line of the mouth, and its minutely intersecting crow’s-feet in the corners of the shrewd and squinting eyes.