"It looks as if you'd dressed for the part, and went down with the full intention of playing it," she said. "That rug, too, outlining you like a sheath--_that_ was ready also, strange to say!" "It was Mr. Rensslaer's," said Gay. "I suppose it was _my_ fault that my driver got drunk, and someone had to be found at the last moment to take his place?" "Mr. Rensslaer could have taken it, and would have done, if you'd let him--" And as this was true, Gay had no answer ready on that point. "Anyway, I won it," she said, and tossed her pretty head, "that's the main thing." "Because Carlton Mackrell let you," said Lossie. "Didn't you hear the crowd howling at him when he gave you the inside place? Or so a man told me who was watching the race through his glasses. Hark!" Through the window came the yell of a newsboy in the street: "Well-known owner of Trotters expelled for unfair driving at Waterloo Park to-day!" Lossie ran out of the room and downstairs, while Gay, her heart beating wildly, and very pale, felt her triumph turned to sawdust between her teeth. Carlton's horse was a far better one than hers ... Rensslaer had told her so ... he knew how to drive, she did not. "Here it is," cried Lossie, returning. Unfolding the sheet at the latest news, she read aloud a brief paragraph announcing that Mr. Carlton Mackrell had been expelled from the Clubhouse, and barred from ever driving again, for tampering with his horse's toe weights in the race for the Gold Vase, won by Miss Gay Lawless. And he had not said one word to her of this. Oh! what had she done? For a whim, and in pure hot-headedness, she had taken up a sport suitable for men only, made herself notorious, inflicted pain on her brother and Chris, and, finally, made a man who loved her submit to disgrace, and deprivation of his favourite amusement, rather than she should be disappointed of a silly Gold Vase! Did Rensslaer know--had he _seen_ it, and made no sign? "Poor Mackrell!" she said, then dried her tears, as she would not have done had he or Chris, or Rensslaer been present. At that moment the distracted Professor came into the room, and Gay, with an impulse of pity, went up, and laid her hand on his arm. "My driver was drunk, Frank," she said, "and it had to be decided all in a moment. It didn't seem to me wrong at all then--and even now I'm not sure that it was--it's Carlton Mackrell I'm worrying about--" then went away, and locked herself into her room. She was very quiet when she got there, poor Gay, sitting on the side of her bed, with all the triumph of a few hours ago fizzled out. A debt of honour came before all others, and this was one of them.... Gay's heart was generous enough to realise that surely Carlton had never meant her to know, never meant to be found out, but he had bungled at his tricky work, as honest men will, and he meant her to have that Gold Vase, and she had got it--for what it was worth.