Then, as if she were suddenly aroused from a dream, a shudder passed through her, her body stiffened, and with a low cry, a sob, she struggled free. "How dare you, how dare you?" she gasped. She sped swiftly to the window, leaving Mostyn standing aghast before this fresh inconsistency of woman. "I'll never forgive you--never! I--I hate you." With which she swung out into the night, and a moment later Mostyn could hear her sobbing as she ran down the gravel path. CHAPTER XIII. MOSTYN PREPARES FOR BATTLE. "Well, my boy, I'm glad to have seen you, and to have heard all about this curious business from your own lips. Gad, I could hardly believe it, when Pierce first told me, but thought he was trying to pull my leg! The young dog, it's just the sort of thing he might have been capable of." Genial "Old Rory" smiled indulgently at his nephew, and then turned again to Mostyn, to whom he had been addressing himself. "Anyway, you may depend upon me to do all I can to help you. It's about the finest sporting event I've ever come across in my life, and there's humour in it, too"--Sir Roderick's broad features reflected his appreciation of this--"just the sort of humour that I should have expected of my poor old friend, Anthony Royce. To give a man--one who knows nothing about racing--forgive me Clithero, but that's true, isn't it?--a big capital, and oblige him, if he's going to win a still bigger legacy at the end of it, to steep himself in racing, just because there's an old grudge to be paid off against the legatee's father, who abhors racing as he abhors the devil--well, there's something that appeals to me in that, and I wouldn't miss the fun of watching your progress for the next year, no, not if I never won another race in my life. Here's luck to you, Clithero!"--the old man lifted a foaming glass of champagne to his lips as he spoke--"may you do justice to yourself, to Royce's memory, and to your father." "Old Rory" laughed again as he spoke the last words. He was picturing to himself the expression of John Clithero's face when the latter came to learn that his son was becoming a prominent figure upon the turf. "He'll moan about the sins of the children being visited upon the fathers," Sir Roderick muttered to himself, then continued: "But don't you let out your secret, my boy, not to a living soul except those who are already in the know. It's a good thing your solicitors could keep it quiet for you. If anything of the truth leaked out before you had carried the job through, the difficulties of your task would be magnified a hundred-fold. You may take that from me, and I know what I'm talking about."