"I should have remembered and not asked you back to tea; but I was so miserable, and it is so lonely sitting in this house, that I could stand it no longer.... Talking to you saved me from thinking, and I did not want to think until this race was over. If Silver Braid is beaten we are ruined. Indeed, I don't know what will become of us. For fifteen years I have borne up; I have lived on little at the best of times, and very often have gone without; but that is nothing compared to the anxiety--to see him come in with a white face, to see him drop into a chair and hear him say, 'Beaten a head on the post,' or 'Broke down, otherwise he would have won in a canter.' I have always tried to be a good wife and tried to console him, and to do the best when he said, 'I have lost half a year's wages, I don't know how we shall pull through.' I have borne with ten thousand times more than I can tell you. The sufferings of a gambler's wife cannot be told. Tell me, what do you think my feelings must have been when one night I heard him calling me out of my sleep, when I heard him say, 'I can't die, Annie, without bidding you good-bye. I can only hope that you will be able to pull through, and I know that the Gaffer will do all he can for you, but he has been hit awful hard too. You mustn't think too badly of me, Annie, but I have had such a bad time that I couldn't put up with it any longer, and I thought the best thing I could do would be to go.' That's just how he talked--nice words to hear your husband speak in your ear through the darkness! There was no time to send for the doctor, so I jumped out of bed, put the kettle on, and made him drink glass after glass of salt and water. At last he brought up the laudanum." Esther listened to the melancholy woman, and remembered the little man whom she saw every day so orderly, so precise, so sedate, so methodical, so unemotional, into whose life she thought no faintest emotion had ever entered--and this was the truth. "So long as I only had myself to think of I didn't mind; but now there are the children growing up. He should think of them. Heaven only knows what will become of them... John is as kind a husband as ever was if it weren't for that one fault; but he cannot resist having something on any more than a drunkard can resist the bar-room." "Winner, winner, winner of the Stewards' Cup!" The women started to their feet. When they got into the street the boy was far away; besides, neither had a penny to pay for the paper, and they wandered about the town hearing and seeing nothing, so nervous were they. At last Esther proposed to ask at the "Red Lion" who had won. Mrs. Randal begged her to refrain, urging that she was unable to bear the tidings should it be evil. "Silver Braid," the barman answered. The girl rushed through the doors. "It is all right, it is all right; he has won!"