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76 the election, for she heard Hallett and Lord Horace discussing it and extolling the Baròlin breed. She looked at the horse to see if it showed any traces of a wild ride, but it was as fresh, and spirited, and sleek as though it had not left the stable for days. Elsie wondered whether he had really taken that gallop, and if so whether it had, as he had said, worked off the excitement. He certainly seemed now absolutely collected, but perhaps his composure was a sign of excitement at white heat. She observed that during the early part of the day Trant was not with his partner, and that when he did show himself he seemed by far the most wearied and discomposed of the two.

Elsie watched the fortunes of the day from her balcony. She saw Hallett go into the court-house up the street, and then Blake came up to the court-house door and got off his horse and went in too, accompanied by a few friends, and she assumed that the counting of the votes was going on. She went in and out uneasily from and back to the balcony. Some hours after she saw a rush made towards the courthouse by an excited crowd. Presently she heard a wild outcry, at first she hardly knew whether of grief or joy, and then broke out the song of a God save Ireland," mingled with hurrahs for Blake, and a crowd rushed up waving banners and sticks some with green ribbons tied to them, and she knew that the victory was won. The crowd halted under the hotel outside, and Elsie assumed that Blake was there, and that he would have to make another speech. So he did. His voice rang out with all the proud vigour of victory—and she heard him tell of the regeneration of Ireland, and the manifest destiny of Australia.

Lord Horace had worked manfully. It certainly was not his fault that Frank Hallett was not elected. But when the poll was declared, just before the crowd returned to the hotel, it was known that Blake had come in the victor by a majority of twenty votes.

Again Elsie and Blake met in the corridor. She was coming from her room, he was going towards his. She went straight to him and held out her hand.