Nervous breakdown
after a particularly strenuous season was the usually accepted
explanation, but there are three or four people who know that she
never really recovered from the dawn breaking over the Brahma-
putra river.
A MATTER OF SENTIMENT
It was the eve of the great race, and scarcely a member of Lady
Susan's house-party had as yet a single bet on. It was one of
those unsatisfactory years when one horse held a commanding market
position, not by reason of any general belief in its crushing
superiority, but because it was extremely difficult to pitch on
any other candidate to whom to pin ones faith. Peradventure II
was the favourite, not in the sense of being a popular fancy, but
by virtue of a lack of confidence in any one of his rather
undistinguished rivals. The brains of clubland were much
exercised in seeking out possible merit where none was very
obvious to the naked intelligence, and the house-party at Lady
Susan's was possessed by the same uncertainty and irresolution
that infected wider circles.
"It is just the time for bringing off a good coup," said Bertie
van Tahn.
"Undoubtedly. But with what?" demanded Clovis for the twentieth
time.
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