he race?"

Mr. Ffrench exclaimed some inarticulate words, but neither heard him.

"Send Dick," Emily answered, her eyes on the gray eyes above her.
"Send Dick--I understand, I will come."

He kissed her once, then she drew back and he went down the terraces
toward the gates. As Emily sank down on the bench by the pavilion
door, Bailey brushed past her, running after the straight, lithe
figure that went steadily on out of sight among the huge trees planted
and tended by five generations of Ffrenches.

When the vistas of the park were empty, Emily slowly turned to face
her uncle.

"You love David Ffrench?" he asked, his voice thin and harsh.

"Yes," she answered. She had no need to ask if Lestrange were meant.

"He is married to some woman of the music-halls."

"No."

"How do you know? He has told you?"

She lifted to him the superb confidence of her glance, although
nervous tremors shook her in wavelike succession.

"If he had been married, he would not have made me care for him. He
has asked me to be his wife."

They were equally strange to each other in these new characters, and
equally spent by emotion. Neither moving, they sat opposite each other
in silence. So Bailey found them when he came back later, to take his
massive stand in the doorway, his hands in his pockets and his strong
jaw set.

"I think that things are kind of mixed up here, Mr. Ffrench," he
stated grimly. "I guess I'm the one to straighten them out a bit; I've
loved Mr. David from the time he was a kid and never saw him get a
square deal yet. You asked him what he was doing here--I'll tell you;
he is Lestrange."

There is a degree of amazement which precludes speech; Mr. Ffrench
looked back at his partner, mute.

"He is Lestrange. He never meant you to know; he'd have left without
your ever knowing, but for Miss Emily. I guess I don't need to remind
you of what he's done; if it hadn't been for him we might have closed
our doors some day. He understands the business as none of us
back-number, old-fashioned ones do; he took hold and shook some life
into it. We can make cars, but he can make people buy them.
Advertising! Why, just that fool picture he drew on the back of a pad,
one day, of a row of thermometers up to one hundred forty, with the
sign 'Mercuries are at the top,' made more people notice."

Bailey cleared his throat. "He was always making people notice, and
laughing while he did it. He's risked his neck on every course