The girl bent across the table, her eyes bright, her whole attitude expectant, alluring. "To-night?" she murmured. "But I thought to-night—"
Gordon met her glance squarely, his eyes ablaze with passion. He leaned forward in turn until his hand touched hers. "In just one hour," he cried. "And an hour—can seem like a thousand years."
CHAPTER IV
[THE ESSEX HANDICAP]
Handicap Day, and true Handicap weather. A warm sun shining from a cloudless sky, a light cool breeze blowing from the west, a track in perfect condition—what more could the heart of horseman desire on the greatest day of the horseman's year?
As early as twelve o'clock the long procession began to wind its leisurely way toward the track. By automobile, by coach and carriage, by steam yacht and railroad train and electric car, even by bicycle and on foot the crowds surged and flocked and fought their way, until by two o'clock thirty thousand people crowded grandstand and betting ring and paddock, keen, alert, active, on tiptoe with eagerness to see the Essex run.
High up in the grandstand Major McMurtrie, a trifle flushed, more than a trifle excited, eloquent in the extreme, seated himself beside Rose Ashton and Gordon, and with a wealth of gesture fought and refought for their benefit the bygone Handicaps of twenty years.
"The race of the year, my dear boy, the race of the year," he repeated for perhaps the fiftieth time. "No race like it, sir, for the true lover of the racehorse, and a more perfect day for it, sir, I have never seen."
Rose, looking up from her race-card, nodded assent. "Forty thousand dollars to the winner," she said thoughtfully. "It's a tremendous sum, isn't it?"