Rada and Pierce were seated in front, and it was not long before the girl had elicited from her companion all that was to be told. She learnt the full story of Anthony Royce's will; learnt, too, the true reason why Mostyn, loving and desiring her as truly as ever, had been constrained to silence. Pierce, once having committed himself, had been as straw in her hands; and perhaps, since he saw that there was now every chance of the misunderstanding between the pair of lovers being cleared up, he was not, after all, so sorry that he had spoken. "If Pollux wins it's all right," he muttered to himself, "and if Castor wins--well, I believe, though poor Mostyn will be ruined, Rada will want him to stick to her all the same. And Mostyn would never have thought of that. Perhaps it's just as well I spoke." In this way he sought to comfort himself for his indiscretion. As for Rada, she was swayed by varying emotions. First and foremost came the knowledge that Mostyn loved her, that he had never ceased to love her. "I've been such a little cat to him," she said, penitently clasping her hands together, and quite careless now of revealing the truth of her own love. "But why didn't he tell me everything? Why should he have kept the secret from me? I'd have let him have Castor--I'd have done anything--anything. But it's only now"--she drew her breath quickly--"when it's too late, that I get to know the truth, and that only by bullying it out of you, Mr. Trelawny!" She dashed her hand to her eyes. "I feel that it's I--I--who am standing in his way of gaining all this money," she whispered, "and if Castor wins now--oh, I shall hate myself!" "It's just that that Mostyn feared," said Pierce quickly. "That's why he wouldn't tell you. Castor had to run. Miss Armitage, you must just take it as a sporting chance. Things must be allowed to go on exactly as they are. There isn't a shade to choose between one horse or the other. Castor may win or Pollux may win; the one means a lot to you, the other means a lot to him. It's fair for both sides: the issue rests upon a race, a race where the chances are absolutely even. One couldn't have anything better or finer than that." But Rada turned her head away, and Pierce could see by the quivering of her shoulders how deeply moved she was. It was a few moments before he ventured to speak again. "You love Mostyn, Miss Armitage?" He lowered his voice, even though his conversation with the girl had passed quite unheeded, for she was occupying the outside seat, while his neighbour on the other side, a Parliamentary friend of Sir Roderick's, an Irishman like himself, was deeply engaged in discussing the question of cattle driving with a lady of prominence in London society.