‘Is it much?’ asked Silverbridge, jumping still higher in his bed.  Then he was told that it was very much,—­that the iron had driven itself into the horse’s frog, and that there was actually no possibility that the horse should be run that day.

‘He can’t walk, my Lord,’ said the groom in that authoritative voice which grooms use when they desire to have their own way, and to make their masters understand that they at any rate are not to have theirs.

‘Where is Pook?’ asked Silverbridge.  But Mr Pook was also still in bed.

It was soon known to Lord Silverbridge as a fact that in very truth the horse could not run.  Then sick with headache, with a stomach suffering unutterable things, he had, as he dressed himself, to think of his seventy thousand pounds.  Of course the money would be forthcoming.  But how would his father look at him?  How would it be between him and his father now? after such a misfortune how would he be able to break that other matter to the Duke, and say that he had changed his mind about his marriage,—­ that he was going to abandon Lady Mabel Grex and give his hand and a future Duchess’s coronet to an American girl whose grandfather had been a porter.

A nail in his foot!  He had heard of such things before.  He knew that such accidents had happened.  What an ass must he have been to risk such a sum on the well-being and safety of an animal who might any day pick up a nail in is foot?  Then he thought of the caution which Lupton had given him.  What good would the money have done him had he won it?  What more could he have than he now enjoyed?  But to lose such a sum of money!  With all his advantages of wealth he felt himself to be as forlorn and wretched as though he had nothing left in the world before him.

CHAPTER 44

How It was Done

The story was soon about the town, and was the one matter for discussion in all racing quarters.  About the town!  It was about England, about all Europe.  It had travelled to America and the Indies, to Australia and the Chinese cities before two hours were over.  Before the race was run the accident was discussed and something like the truth surmised in Cairo, Calcutta, Melbourne, and San Francisco.  But at Doncaster it was so all-pervading a matter that down to the tradesmen’s daughters and the boys at the free-school the town was divided into two parties, one party believing it to have been a ‘plant’, and the other holding that the cause had been natural.  It is hardly necessary to say that the ring, as a rule, belonged to the former party.  The ring always suspects.  It did not behove even those who would win by the transaction to stand up for its honesty.