But in spite of his professed haste, Lestrange stopped at the head of the stairs and went back to recover some small object lying on the floor beneath a pool of chilling metal. When he rejoined Dick, it was to linger yet a moment to look back across the teeming room. "It's worth having, all this," he commented, with the first touch of sadness the other ever had seen in him. "Don't throw it away, Ffrench." There is usually a surgeon within reach of a factory. When Mr. Ffrench passed out to the cart where Emily waited, he passed Dick and the village physician entering. The elder gentleman put on his glasses to survey his nephew's white face. "An accident?" he inquired. The casual curiosity was sufficiently exasperating, and Dick's nerves were badly gone. "Nothing worth mentioning," he snapped. "Just that I nearly fell into the machinery and Lestrange has done up his arm pulling me out. That's all." And he hurried the doctor on without further parley or excuse. Lestrange was in the room behind the office, smoking one of Bailey's cigars and listening to that gentleman's vigorous remarks concerning managers who couldn't keep out of their own machinery, the patient not having considered it worth while to explain Dick's share in the mischance. An omission which Dick himself promptly remedied in his anxious contrition. Later, when the arm was being swathed in white linen, its owner spoke to his companion of the morning: "I hope you didn't annoy Miss Ffrench with this trifling matter, as you came in." "I didn't speak to her at all, only to my uncle." "Very good." Something in the too-indolent tone roused Dick's usually dormant observation. Startled, he scrutinized Lestrange. "Is that why you bothered yourself with me?" he stammered. "Is that why--" "Shut up!" warned Lestrange forcibly and inelegantly. "That isn't tight enough, Doc. You know I'm experienced at this sort of thing, and I'm going to use this arm." But Dick was not to be silenced in his new enlightenment. When the surgeon momentarily turned away, he leaned nearer, his plump face grim. "If I brace up, it won't be for Emily, but for you, Darling Lestrange," he whispered viciously. "She don't want me and I don't want her, that way. I've got over that. And, and--oh, confound it, I'm sorry, old man!" "Shut up!" said Lestrange again. But though Dick's very sympathy unconsciously showed the hopeless chasm between the racing driver and Miss Ffrench, the hurt did not cloud the cordial smile Lestrange sent to mitigate his command. VI Emily first heard the full story of the accident that evening, when Dick sat opposite her on the veranda and gave the account in frank anxiety and dejection. "We're going down to-night on the nine o'clock train," he added in conclusion. "To-morrow morning he'll spend practising on the track, and to-morrow evening at six the race starts. And Lestrange starts crippled because I am a clumsy idiot. He laughs at me, but--he'd do that anyhow."