“Yes, and a beautiful dream at that,” added the Major.
“Evidently she’s no nightmare,” echoed a shrill voice from the crowd.
Poor little Cassandra! She was prancing to the music of the band as proudly as a queen, tossing her dainty head from side to side as gamely and defiantly as a sparrow.
The mistress turned with a look, intense in its anxiety, to Thomas, who was still standing, and thrusting her purse into his hand instructed him to hurry with it to Mr. Grannan, tell him what the trainer had done and say to him that as he was Cassandra’s rightful owner she desired him to do as he wished with purse and contents.
Then lifting her glasses to her eyes with trembling hands, she scanned eagerly the horses as they gathered at the post. Soon, from sheer trembling and weakness, her hands dropped into her lap. Now, for the first time, she beheld Grannan with his back turned toward the track and searching with an anxious gaze the balcony upon which she was seated.
He raised his glasses to his eyes and began slowly to sweep the crowd. As he did this her head sank involuntarily upon her breast. The blood rushed to her face. She was abashed—painfully so. What had she done? Could she stop Thomas? Would that she had seen him before she had sent Thomas. Yet he had placed a large sum on Empress. Thomas had said so. What if he should lose? The thought chilled her. She shuddered violently. He has already lost heavily. It may ruin him.
“They’re off!” roared the throng, and then came the portentous silence. She raised her eyes and saw the form of Grannan now facing with earnest gaze the approaching horses. On they came, as if some terror-inspiring object had suddenly stampeded them.
“Rosalind a neck, Lucinda a length, Helen Orland a head,” commenced the song of the “caller,” from below.
Another moment and they were sweeping past the judges’ stand.
The stranger, with a manifest anxiety in the tone of his voice, now observed that Annabel was lapped on Helen Orland and that Empress had moved up well to the front. Lucinda, he said, had fallen back.