Yes, the favorite has won the race; and Mr. Chisholm Cheke has made his fortune. Some few others have won much money, and many have lost, and some are ruined.
Do not look towards the Grand Stand. The haggard faces of those ruined gamesters will haunt your dreams to your life’s end.
It was wonderful how soon after the great act of this drama has been performed that the uncompromised crowd subsided into comparative calmness, and betook themselves again to their outside amusements—their small trading, fortune-telling, ballad-singing, et cetera, while waiting for the next race.
General Lyon ordered up his hampers, and his party had luncheon. After they had finished, the fragments of their feast were distributed to the little beggars that thronged around their carriage-wheels.
At four o’clock our party left the ground to return to London.
The evening drive back to London was attended with all the incidents of the morning drive to Epsom—a hundred-fold increased—the crowd was thicker, the crush closer, the noise louder, the dust higher, the danger greater.
Through all these, however, our party passed safely, and reached their apartments at the Morley House in time for an early tea.
CHAPTER XVII.
HOW THE PARTED MET.
They seemed to those who saw them most,
The careless friends of every day,