Making the Ruxxixg 255 



Cecil had written to his uncle to ask ahout the chance 

 of a horse engaged in the principal 'chase at the Sandown 

 Meeting, and this was the reply. The General had a few 

 horses in training, but did not bet himself, and was the 

 very last man to whom Cecil would have been inclined 

 to apply for help, involving, as such application must do, 

 a confession of his losses ; for the fact that he had run 

 through 10,000/. in eight months, and that he owed the 

 best part of 1,OOOL more, would, he well knew, have so 

 irritated Florence's father as to make relations between 

 them exceedingly strained, to say the least of it ; for 

 the General hated gambling — not in a fanatical way, for 

 he played his game of whist, and lost or won a pound or 

 two, as the case might be ; but this was a very different 

 thing from losing one's whole fortune and incurring 

 liabilities which one had not the means to discharge. 

 And this was Cecil's case, for as another letter on his 

 table told him, in answer to an inquiry he had made, 

 the balance at his bank then amounted to 213/. 7s. 5f/. 



Notwithstanding the bitterness of his past experience, 

 however, he had decided to try once more. When the 

 last certainty he had backed was upset, he had fully 

 determined to believe no more in 'good things'; but 

 hope springs eternal in the human breast, the sickness 

 of defeat passes away, and one becomes sanguine again, 

 or at any rate, sufficiently sanguine once more to tempt 

 fortune. Cecil's good thing, too, was for the very race 

 referred to in Thornton's letter, and it was neither Port 

 Admiral nor Carnation, but a mare called Chimney 

 Corner (by Eooftree — Puss). He had seen the mare 

 run, taken rather a fancy to her make and shape, 

 and he had been told that her connections were in the 

 highest degree confident of landing a handsome stake. 



