In his way he was stubborn, stubborn in his determination to abide by the conditions he had imposed upon himself. It was true that he did not understand women, and Rada was, of course, a particularly complex study. "I'll wait till after the Derby," so he told himself over and over again. "Rada wants no talk of love till then; has she not said so?" He often wondered why Rada should sometimes be cross with him without a cause; and once--he remembered quite well--she had burst into tears and run away; it was just before he left Partinborough for a longer stay than usual in town. All this while, although, so far, failure had befallen him, there was not the smallest doubt in his mind that he would ultimately be successful in carrying out the terms of Anthony Royce's bequest. But a fresh series of failures awaited him at the opening of the season. The Lincolnshire--that was the first of the three races in which his horse had run into second place; then had followed the Grand National, and here, having successfully negotiated Beecher's Brook and Valentine's Brook on the first round, Mostyn's mare, Giralda, had come badly to grief upon the second round; both jockey and mare were injured, the latter so much so that she had then and there to be shot. The Chester Cup--second again; and finally, the City and Suburban, with exactly the same result. Now there remained Asmodeus, who was second favourite for the Two Thousand Guineas, and a filly for the Thousand, whose training, however, had been insufficient for Mostyn to place much reliance upon her. She might possibly do better for the Oaks--absolutely Mostyn's last chance--but even with regard to this he had little confidence. For a long while he had steadily refused to have anything to do with the Derby, and so valuable time had been lost. Now he had a colt named Cipher in training, but Cipher was not a patch upon either Castor or upon Sir Roger's Pollux, and could hardly be looked upon as standing a chance. Such was the present position, and, considering it squarely and without bias, both Mostyn and Pierce had to admit that it was a desperate one. "That beast of a Jew, Isaacson, will carry off the Two Thousand," groaned Pierce. "Don Quixote is bound to win on his form. We shall be in for another second. The only thing is, that we've got a better man up. Stanhope is a fine jockey, while Wilson is a fellow whom I never trusted, and they speak badly of him in the ring. But I expect he's being well paid for his job."