Her voice quivered and shook. She was speaking with an intensity of feeling unusual to her. "I watched the little colt as he grew up," she went on, and her tone was low and plaintive now. "I fed him with my own hand, just as I feed Bess, and he got to know and to love me. I gloried over him as I saw him growing handsomer and stronger--growing into what I had expected he would. I knew he would win the Derby for me, every instinct I have told me so. And do you know, father"--she drew a little closer to the old man's chair, but she was not looking at him, she was absorbed in the train of her own thoughts--"it was not only pride that possessed me; Castor was going to make our fortune for us--I felt that, too--and the money would be mine, mine to do with as I wished. I used to sit and dream of the way I should spend that money. We were going to leave this ugly cottage, and have everything nice and pretty about us; we were going to start a new life altogether." Poor Rada! It was such a vain, such a hopeless dream! for, as far as her father was concerned at least, any new life was out of the question. She caught her breath, and went on speaking, more to herself than to him, quite heedless of the fact that she received no answer. "Oh! it would have been my money--mine, just as Castor was my horse. If you knew, if you could guess, how I have built upon this! But now there is to be no more dreaming for me: the gold has been fairy gold, it has slipped through my fingers like so many dead leaves. You have taken Castor from me--you have sold him for a thousand pounds! And now what is to be done?" She choked down her sobs, clenched her little fists with characteristic energy, vaguely conscious of the futility of her emotional outburst, and her natural energy of disposition once more coming to the fore, she took a quick step towards her father. "What is to be done?" she repeated. There was no reply, save for a dull, unintelligent grunt. Captain Armitage's head was lolling over the side of his chair, his eyes were closed, his mouth open. He was asleep--he had been asleep all the while. Rada's first impulse was to take him by the shoulders and to shake him violently, for, small as she was, she knew that she possessed more strength than he. Her nerves were tingling with suppressed passion, her cheeks were suffused with colour. She touched him on the shoulder; he stirred and muttered, then his hand went out instinctively towards the table as though in search of his glass. Rada drew back, nauseated. She knew that it was hopeless to protest with such a man as her father--she must leave him to himself. It was for her alone to act. A few moments later, having loosened his collar and settled him as comfortably as she could in his chair, a horrible task to which she was no stranger, she stole quietly out of the room.