"Oh, Mr. Bulkley," quavered Dorothy, "I can't! I am afraid of that horse! Please--please don't ask me to ride behind him again!" She trembled so violently that the doctor interposed, saying, curtly: "I must disallow your claim, sir! My patient's nerves are to be considered, and, really, though you were acting as the young lady's escort for this unfortunate drive, it seems to me her fiancé is the proper person to look after her now!" William Henry Bulkley's eyes stood out like a crab's. His red face purpled. He breathed in loud gasps. "Her--her what?" he exclaimed. "Her fiancé! Who the devil are you talking about? She has no fiancé!" The doctor had raised Dorothy and given her his arm, but now he turned in astonishment from the white, set face of Galt to the red fury of Bulkley, and back again. When, with a little tremulous laugh, Dorothy, with surprised blue eyes, said: "Why, Mr. Bulkley, were you not told, then? Now, had you been a woman," she held out her hand, the third finger all brave with flashing solitaire, "you would not have needed telling. See?" And Leslie, bending to draw down her veil and hide the wounded cheek, whispered: "Ah! my love! my love!" And then they were in the doctor's carriage and on the way to Woodsedge, while William Henry Bulkley, in a black devil's rage, followed. John Lawton had returned from his walk, and, as a hen-mother frets over her ducklings in the water, so he fretted over the absence of both his girls. He wandered aimlessly about, instead of piling up the wood in the shed, as he had intended doing, while the lengthening absence of Dorothy filled Mrs. Lawton with secret satisfaction. They were taking a drive, just as she had intended they should, and Mr. Bulkley was undoubtedly making the most of his opportunity. She hoped he might not make the mistake of being too--too impulsively ardent. "Very young girls sometimes take alarm so easily!" she thought. "And Dorrie is the merest baby in such matters!" And then confusion reigned, when, with helpless arm, bruised, cut face, and yet such curiously shining eyes, Dorothy, who had gone forth with Mr. Bulkley, was assisted into the house by a strange doctor and young Galt. Then came tender greetings, hurried footsteps, and curt explanations. The doctor, aided by the temporarily German-speaking Lena, whose fright had strangled English in her very throat, was attending the injured girl in her own room. Letitia was weeping hysterically, and John Lawton, the father, was struggling hard to maintain the composure expected of Mr. Lawton, the man. For the calm indifference of a doctor's attitude toward a simple fracture, especially when young bones are in question, is rarely emulated by anxious relatives. Even within the ordinary family circle a broken limb is regarded as a serious mishap; but in this abode of genteel poverty, where yet there was such wealth of family love, a daughter's broken arm was a terrifying disaster, a grievous catastrophe.