“I don’t think, sir, you will want any more specific answer to your question.”

“You will repent this,” he panted, his face distorted by a raging disappointment.  “I do not contradict your statements.  It would be beneath me to do so; but some day you may have cause to regret having made them.”

“I may tell you,” she said, as she turned, “that it is not my intention to make public the knowledge that I gained of your conduct yesterday.  I have no proof save my own absolute conviction, and the knowledge that I have of your past.”

He did not look round, but walked at a rapid pace down the garden.  Half an hour later the Phantom’s anchor was got up, and she sailed for Southampton Water.  Beyond giving the necessary order to get under way, Carthew did not speak a word until she anchored off the pier, then he went ashore at once and took the next train for town, sending off a telegram before starting.

When he got home he asked the servant briefly if Mr. Conking had come.

“Yes, sir.  He is waiting for you in the dining room.”

“Well, Carthew, how have things gone off?  I see by the papers this morning that you won the Cup, and also that the Osprey’s bobstay burst at the right time, and that a great sensation had been caused by the discovery that there had been foul play.

“Why, what is the matter with you?  You look as black as a thundercloud.”

“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.”