"And no wonder. I won the race, but I have lost the girl."
"The deuce you have. Why, I thought that you felt quite certain of that."
"So I did; and it would have come off all right if some infernal fellow had not turned up, and told her about an old affair of mine that I thought buried and forgotten three or four years ago; and it took me so aback that, as she said, my face was the best evidence of the truth of the story. More than that, she declared that she knew that I was at the bottom of the Osprey's business. However, she has no evidence about that; but the other story did the business for me, and the game is all up in that quarter. There never was such bad luck. She as much as told me that, if I had proposed to her before she had heard the story, she would have said yes."
"No chance of her changing her mind?"
"Not a scrap."
"It is an awkward affair for you."
"Horribly awkward. Yes, I have only got fifteen thousand left, and unless things go right at Goodwood I shall be cleaned right out. I calculated that everything would be set right if I married this girl. Things have gone badly of late."
"Yes, your luck has been something awful. It did seem that with the pains that we took, and the way I cleared the ground for you by bribing jockeys and so on, we ought to have made pots of money. Of course, we did pull off some good things, but others we looked on as safe, and went in for heavily, all turned out wrong."
"Well, there will be nothing for me but to get across the Channel unless, as I say, things go right at Goodwood."
"I should not be nervous about it, for unless there is some dark horse I feel sure that your Rosney has got the race in hand."