Desperation came to help him brave those eyes—­came and failed.  He talked, declaimed, avowed—­grew brutally frank.  Finally he spoke of the mortgage he held, and waited, breathing heavily, for the answer.  There was none.

“I suppose it’s some one else, eh?” he rapped out, red showing in the brown of his eyes.

Silence.  He savagely cut the gelding across the ears, and then checked its answering, maddened leap.  The red deepened in Sue’s cheek—­two red spots, the flag of courage.

“It’s this nephew of Major Calvert’s,” added Waterbury.  He lost the last shred of common decency he could lay claim to; it was caught up and whirled away in the tempest of his passion.  “I saw him to-day, on my way to the track.  He didn’t see me.  When I knew him his name was Garrison—­Billy Garrison.  I discharged him for dishonesty.  I suppose he sneaked home to a confiding uncle when the world had kicked him out.  I suppose they think he’s all right, same as you do.  But he’s a thief.  A common, low-down—­”

The girl turned swiftly, and her little gauntlet caught Waterbury full across the mouth.

“You lie!” she whispered, very softly, her face white and quivering, her eyes black with passion.

And then Lethe saw her opportunity.  Sensed it in the momentary relaxing of the bridle-rein.  She whipped the bit into her fierce, even, white teeth, and with a snort shot down the pike.

And then Waterbury’s better self gained supremacy; contrition, self-hatred rushing in like a fierce tidal wave and swamping the last vestige of animalism.  He spurred blindly after the fast-disappearing filly.

*****

Garrison rode one of the best races of his life that night.  It was a trial of stamina and nerve.  Lethe was primarily a sprinter, and the gelding, raised to his greatest effort by the genius of his rider, outfought her, outstayed her.  As he flew down the moon-swept road, bright as at any noontime, Garrison knew success would be his, providing Sue kept her seat, her nerve, and the saddle from twisting.

Inch by inch the white, shadow-flecked space between the gelding and the filly was eaten up.  On, on, with only the tempest of their speed and the flying hoofs for audience.  On, on, until now the gelding had poked his nose past the filly’s flying hocks.

Garrison knew horses.  He called on the gelding for a supreme effort, and the gelding answered impressively.  He hunched himself, shot past the filly.  Twenty yards’ gain, twenty yards to the fore, and then Garrison turned easily in the saddle.  “All right, Miss Desha, let her come,” he sang out cheerfully.

And the filly came, came hard; came with all the bitterness of being outstripped by a clumsy gelding whom she had beaten time and again.  As she caught the latter’s slowed pace, as her wicked nose drew alongside of the other’s withers, Garrison shot out a hand, clamped an iron clutch on the spume-smeared bit, swung the gelding across the filly’s right of way; then, with his right hand, choked the fight from her widespread nostrils.