"I have just come down-stairs." He picked up the newspaper beside him and passed across the folded page. "_All in readiness for Beach Contest_," the head-lines ran. "_Last big driver to arrive, Lestrange is in Mercury camp with R. Ffrench, representative of Company._" And there was a blurred picture of a speeding car with driver and mechanician masked to goblinesque non-identity, with the legend underneath: "'_Darling' Lestrange, in his Mercury on the Georgia course._" "Next year I shall make him part owner. It was always my poor brother's desire to have the future name still Ffrench and Ffrench. He was not thinking of Richard then; he had hope of--" Emily lifted her gaze from the picture, recalled to attention by the break. "Of?" she echoed vaguely. "Of one who is unworthy thought. Richard has redeemed our family from extinction; that is at rest." He paused for an instant. "My dear child, when you are married and established, I shall be content." Her breathing quickened, her courage rose to the call of the moment. "If Dick is here, if he is instead of a substitute," she said, carefully quiet in manner, "would it matter, since I am only a girl, whom I married, Uncle Ethan?" The recollection of that evening when Emily had given her promise of aid, stirred under Mr. Ffrench's self-absorbtion. He looked across the table at her colorless, eager face with perhaps his first thought of what that promise might have cost her. "No," he replied kindly. "It is part of my satisfaction that you are set free to follow your own choice, without thought of utility or fortune. Of course, I need not say provided the man is of your own class and associations. We will fear no more low marriages." She had known it before, but it was hard to hear the sentence embodied in words. Emily folded her hands over the paper in her lap and the pleasant breakfast-room darkened before her. Mr. Ffrench continued speaking of Dick, unheard. When the long meal was ended and her uncle withdrew to meet Bailey in the library, Emily escaped outdoors. There was a quaint summer-house part way down the park, an ancient white pavilion standing beside the brook that gurgled by on its way to the Hudson, where the young girl often passed her hours. She went there now, carrying her little work-basket and the newspaper containing the picture of Lestrange. "I will save it," was her thought. "Perhaps I may find better ones--this does not show his face--but I will have this now. It may be a long time before I see him." But she sat with the embroidery scissors in her hand, nevertheless, without cutting the reprint. Lestrange would return to the factory, she never doubted, and all would continue as before, except that she must not see him. He would understand that it was not possible for anything else to happen, at least for many years. Perhaps, after Dick was married--