A Change Impends

* * * * *

Stull, whispering in Brandes' ear again, where he sat beside him in
the grand stand, added to his earlier comment on Ruhannah's
appearance: "Why don't you fix her up, Eddie? It looks like you been robbing a
country school."

Brandes' slow, greenish eyes marked sleepily the distant dust, where
Mr. Sanford's Nick Stoner was leading a brilliant field, steadily
overhauling the favourite, Deborah Glenn.

"When the time comes for me to fix her up," he said between thin lips
which scarcely moved, "she'll look like Washington Square in May--not
like Fifth Avenue and Broadway."

Nick Stoner continued to lead. Stull's eyes resembled two holes burnt
in a sheet; Brandes yawned. They were plunging the limit on the
Sanford favourite.

As for Ruhannah, she sat with slender gloved hands tightly clasped,
lips parted, intent, fascinated with the sunlit beauty of the scene.

Brandes looked at her, and his heavy, expressionless features altered
subtly: "Some running!" he said.

A breathless nod was her response. All around them repressed
excitement was breaking out; men stood up and shouted; women rose, and
the club house seemed suddenly to blossom like a magic garden of
wind-tossed flowers.

Through the increasing cheering Stull looked on without a sign of
emotion, although affluence or ruin, in the Sanford colours, sat
astride the golden roan.

Suddenly Ruhannah stood up, one hand pressed to the ill-fitting blue
serge over her wildly beating heart. Brandes rose beside her. Not a
muscle in his features moved.