Elizabeth bravely redeemed her promise. In one week a delightful change came over her. She tripped about the house singing. Her health returned with her spirits, and she regained in a few days what she had lost in as many weeks. Blair himself experienced a certain relief. He sat down one day and figured up the profits he had made out of his plantation within the time that he had kept his “horse or two,” and he was startled at the result. But for that “horse or two” he would have been a rich man. He anticipated some terrible struggles in the future against his mania, but if only Alabaster won--and he _must_ win--Blair would have accomplished his object. He would have got the better of Skelton, he would have won enough--in short, he would be just at the point where he could give up with dignity and comparative ease the sport that had so nearly ruined him. The eventful day came at last--the closing day of the spring meeting. There had been four days of racing in perfect May weather, with splendid attendance and a great concourse of strangers. Skelton’s stable had been very successful. Every day the two men met at the races and exchanged nods and a few words of ordinary courtesy. Sometimes Skelton drove over tandem; once he drove his four-horse coach, with Lewis Pryor on the box seat. He was always the observed of observers. Mrs. Blair, on one pretext or another, refrained from attending the course upon any of the first four days, albeit they were gala occasions in the county; but on the final day, when the great match was to be run, her high spirit would not allow her to stay at home. She knew perfectly well that the whole county understood how things were with them, for in patriarchal communities everybody’s private affairs are public property. They even knew that Blair had promised his wife that this should be the last--the very last--of his horse racing.