Dorothy did not go to Epsom--her nerves could not have stood the strain--and when she heard of Moonbeam's defeat she was grateful to her impulse. Nowadays her self-confidence was very easily upset, and from the moment Houston had appeared upon the scene at Newmarket she had never in her heart expected that Moonbeam would win the great race. It was Tony himself who brought her the bad news. In a gray tail-coat and with gray top-hat set askew upon his flushed face--flushed with more than temper and disappointment, she thought--he strode up and down the smoking-room at Curzon Street, swinging his field-glasses round and round by their straps, until she begged him not to break the chandelier. "Break the chandelier," he laughed. "That's good, by Jove! What about breaking myself? You don't seem to understand what this means, my dear Doodles. I've lost sixty thousand pounds over that cursed animal. Sixty thousand pounds! Do you hear? And I've got four days to find the money. Do you realize I shall have to mortgage Clare in order to settle up on Monday?" "Mortgage Clare?" Dorothy gasped; she turned white and swayed against the table. At that moment Tony let the straps escape from his hand and the glasses went crashing into a large mirror. "Yes, mortgage Clare," he repeated, savagely. It was only the noise of the broken glass that kept her from fainting; weakly she pointed at the mirror and with a wavering smile upon her usually firm lips she whispered something about seven years of bad luck. "Well, it's nothing to laugh about," said Tony. "I wasn't laughing. Oh, Tony, you can't lose Clare; you mustn't." "Oh well, I mayn't lose it. I may have some luck late in the season. But my other horses have let me down badly so far." "You won't go on betting?" "How else am I to get back what I've lost? I can't make sixty thousand pounds by selling papers!" "Oh, but you...." She put her hand up to her forehead and sank into one of those comfortable chairs upholstered in red leather. "How did Cobbett explain Moonbeam's defeat?" She felt that, however agonizing, she must have the tale of the race to give her an illusion of action, and to silence these bells that were ringing in her brain: "Clare! Clare! Clare!"