“I’m not quite sure,” answered the girl. “She was so upset I could hardly understand her. Besides, the wires are still in bad condition. But it seems some accident or injury has happened to her husband. Gerald is away, and there is no one the poor woman can turn to, so she telephoned for me. And, Clive, she wants to know if you won’t come, too. Please, do. You’re the only relative she has. And she’s so unhappy.” “Just as you wish,” acceded Standish, with no great willingness, “but I’ll be sorry to have to-night’s happiness marred by another row with Conover.” “I gather from what she says he is in no condition for a ‘row’ with anyone. I told her we’d come at once. Please hurry, dear. I hate to think of that frightened little woman trying to meet any sort of a crisis alone.” In the great, comfortless drawing-room of the Mausoleum, on a couch hastily pushed into the centre of the room under the chandelier, lay Caleb Conover, Railroader. Two doctors, who had been working over him, had now drawn back a few paces and were conferring in grave undertones. At the foot of the couch, clad only in nightgown and slippers, as she had been aroused from bed, her sparse hair tight-clumped in a semicircle of kid curlers, Mrs. Conover crouched in a moaning, rocking heap. Scared, whispering groups of servants blocked the doorways or peered curiously in from behind curtains. The air was thick with the pungent smell of antiseptics. The Railroader, lying motionless beneath the unshaded glare of a half-dozen gas jets, was swathed of head and bandaged of arm. He was coatless, and his shirt and waistcoat were thrown open disclosing his mighty chest. Across the couch-end his feet, still booted and spurred, protruded stiffly as a manikin’s. It was upon this scene that Anice and Clive entered. At sight of the girl, Mrs. Conover scrambled to her feet, and with a wild outburst of scared sobs, scuttled forward to meet her, the bedside slippers shuffling and sliding grotesquely along the polished floor. Anice took the panic-stricken, weeping creature into her arms and whispered what words of comfort and encouragement she could. Meanwhile Clive, not desiring to break in on the doctors’ conference, turned to the doorway again and asked a question of one of the servants. For reply the groom, Giles, was thrust forward and obliged to repeat, with dolorous unction, for the tenth time within an hour, the story of the accident.