“True, she is a beauty, ma’am,” replied the trained, “but as for plaything”—he laughed aloud at the thought as he muttered brokenly—“well, if I can get the proper weight on her in that big handicap Saturday, and the track’s right, she might be about the most playful proposition these cracks have yet got up against. And then, there ought to be a good price, too.” “Oh, but you must not sell her.” “Sell her! I could have thumped that lawyer for selling her. No, ma’am; I mean there ought to be heavy odds against her in such company.” “Thomas tells me that Hildreth won yesterday.” “So she did, ma’am; but at short price, odds on, a favorite you know.” “Mr. Grannan, though,” he went on, “so his trainer told me, lost pretty heavily on his entry. He said he telegraphed him to place ten thousand on his entry and that he, of course, lost it. Mr. Grannan’s been playing in tough luck all round, so they say.” At the mention of Grannan’s name the mistress gave a perceptible start, a shudder passed over her, and a moment later, with some stifled remarks she ended the interview, and was moving away in her carriage. Long after she had retired to her apartments in the home of her aunt, did she hear the words that had escaped the lips of the trainer, sounding within her ears. Grannan had had bad luck! The scene in front of the cathedral was again evolving in her mind. The funeral cortege, the coffin piled high with the floral wreaths. A sudden trepidation seized upon her. She had again dropped the handkerchief. She saw the handsome face of the tall figure beside her bending forward to recover it and then gather the fatal flower. Could it be that Grannan’s fate—ill fortune, perhaps ruin—had been sealed by the fall of a handkerchief, as many another horseman’s had by the fall of a flag? And that handkerchief dropped by her hand? Could she then be unwittingly instrumental in the downfall which seemed to threaten him? The thought distracted her. She arose from her seat and walked the floor of her room in a fit of petulancy. Her brain teemed with myriad vague and indescribable fancies. The fingers of her hand grew numb, deadened, as though she had but withdrawn them from his parting grasp. She saw the same expression of his face that had touched her, when she had refused his gift. The look of entreaty in his eyes as he turned away. “Alas!” she at length exclaimed aloud, muttering to herself strangely in her bewilderment. “Alas! alas! for the doctrines of pernicious fatalism. How oft do we entangle ourselves in our own sophisms; and, after all, what poor strugglers we are in the eternal web of destiny. The devils must, indeed, oft laugh out at the fool who has boasted wisdom.” V