“Oh, it’s nothing⁠—nothing at all,” she said with an attempt at lightness. “The money doesn’t matter, but I hate to feel I’ve been a fool.”

She rose to go and refusing an offer of escort, made her way back to her car. There were two more races, but she felt no longer in the mood to tempt fortune. With one of those quick revulsions to which she was prone she had given way to a blackness of spirit, in which she saw herself the stricken plaything of an unjust fate. It was hopeless, she told herself, to hope that her luck would change. Still there was Larry Hughes. She would wire to him to emphasise her letter. And if that failed she would go to see him.