t was October when the consultation was held in the library of the old Ffrench house on the Hudson; December was very near on the sunny morning that Emily drove out to the factory and sought Bailey in his office.

"I wanted to talk with you," she explained, as that gentleman rose to receive her. "We have known each other for a long time, Mr. Bailey; ever since I came from the Sacred Heart to live with Uncle Ethan. That is a very long time."

"It's a matter of five or six years," agreed the charmed Bailey, contemplating her with affectionate pride in her prettiness and grace. "You used to drive out here with your pony and spend many an hour looking on and asking questions. You'll excuse me, Miss Emily, but there was many a man passed the whisper that you'd have made a fine master of the works."

She shook her head, folding her small gloved hands upon the edge of the desk at the opposite sides of which they were seated.

"At least I would have tried. I am quite sure I would have tried. But I am only a girl. I came to ask you something regarding that," she lifted her candid eyes to his, her soft color rising. "Do you know—have you ever met any men who cared and understood about such factories as this? Men who could take charge of a business, the manufacturing and racing and selling, like my uncles? I have a reason for asking."

"Sure thing," said Bailey, unexpectedly prompt. "I've met one man who knows how to handle this factory better than I do, and I've been at it twelve years. And there he is—" he turned in his revolving chair and rolled up the shade covering the glass-set door into the next room, "my manager, Lestrange."

The scene thus suddenly opened to the startled Emily was sufficiently matter-of-fact, yet not lacking in a certain sober animation of its own. Around a drafting table central in the bare, systematic disorder of the apartment beyond, three or four blue-shirted men were grouped, bending over a set of drawings, which Lestrange was explaining. Explaining with a vivid interest in his task that sparkled over his clear face in a changing play of expression almost mesmeric in its command of attention. The men watched and listened intently; they themselves no common laborers, but the intelligent workmen who were to carry out the ideas here set forth. Wherever Lestrange had been, he was coatless and the sleeves of his outing shirt were rolled back, leaving bare the arms whose smooth symmetry revealed little of the racing driver's strength; his thick brown hair was rumpled into boyish waves and across his forehead a fine black streak wrote of recent personal encounter with things practical.

"Oh!" exclaimed Emily faintly. And after a moment, "Close the curtain, please."

None of the group in the next room had noticed the movement of the shade, absorbed in one another; any sound being muffled by the throb of adjacent machinery. Bailey obeyed the request, and leaned back in his chair.

"That's Darling Lestrange," he stated with satisfaction. "That's his own design for an oiling system he's busy with, and it's a beauty. He's entered for every big race coming this season, starting next week in Georgia, and meantime he oversees every department in every building as it never was done before. The man for me, he is."

Emily made an unenthusiastic sign of agreement.

"I meant very different men from Mr. Lestrange," she replied, her dignity altogether Ffrench. "I have no doubt that he is all you say, but I was thinking of another class. I meant—well, I meant a gentleman."

"Oh, you meant a gentleman," replied Bailey, surveying her oddly. "I didn't know, you see. No; I don't know any one like that."

"Thank you. Then I will go. I—it does not matter."

She did not go, however, but remained leaning on the arm of her chair in troubled reverie, her long lashes lowered. Bailey sat as quietly, watching her and waiting.

The murmur of voices came dully through the closed door, one, lighter and clearer in tone, most frequently rising above the roar pervading the whole building. It was not possible that Emily's glimpse of Lestrange across the glass should identify him absolutely with the man she had seen once in the flickering lights and shadows on the Long Island road; but he was not of a type easily forgotten, and she had been awakened to a doubting recognition.

Now, many little circumstances recurred to her; a strangeness in Dick's manner when the new manager was alluded to, the fact that her rescuer on that October night had been driving a racing car and had worn a racing costume; and lastly, when Bailey spoke of "Darling" Lestrange there had flashed across her mind the mechanician's ridiculous answer to the request to aid her chauffeur in changing a tire: "I'll do it for you, Darling." And listening to that dominant voice in the next room, she slowly grew crimson before a vision of herself in the middle of a country road, appealing to a stranger for succor, like the heroine of melodramatic fiction. Decidedly, she would never see Lestrange, never let him discover Miss Ffrench.

"I will go," she reiterated, rising impetuously.

The glass-set door opened with unwarning abruptness.

"I'll see Mr. Bailey," declared some one. "He'll know."

Helpless, Emily stood still, and straightway found herself looking directly into Lestrange's gray eyes as he halted on the threshold.

It was Bailey who upheld the moment, all unconsciously.

"Come in," he invited heartily. "Miss Ffrench, this is our manager, Mr. Lestrange; the man who's going to double our sales this year."

Emily moved, then straightened herself proudly, lifting her small head. Lestrange had recognized her, she felt; the call was to courage, not flight.

"I think I have already met Mr. Lestrange," she said composedly. "I am pleased to meet him again."

"Met him!" cried Bailey. "Met him? Why—"

Neither heeded him. A gleaming surprise and warmth lit Lestrange's always brilliant face.

"Thank you," he answered her. "You are more than good to recall me, Miss Ffrench. I owe an apology for breaking in this way, but I fancied Mr. Bailey alone—and he spoils me."

"It is nothing; I was about to go." She turned to give Bailey her hand, smiling involuntarily in her relief. With a glance, an inflection, Lestrange had stripped their former meeting of its embarrassment and unconventionality, how, she neither analyzed nor cared.

"Good morning," said Bailey. "Shall I take you through, or—"

But Lestrange was already holding open the door, with a bright unconcern as to his workmanlike costume which impressed Emily pleasantly. She wondered if Dick would have borne the situation as well, in the impossible event of his being found at work.

The two walked together down an aisle of the huge, machinery-crowded room, the grimy men lifting their heads to gaze after Emily as she passed. Once Lestrange paused to speak to a man who sat, note-book and pencil in hand, beside another who manipulated under a grinding wheel a delicate aluminum casting.

"Pardon," he apologized to Emily, who had lingered also. "Mathews would have let that go wrong in another moment. He," his smile glanced out, "he is not a Rupert at changing his tires, so to speak, but just a good chauffeur."

The gay and natural allusion delighted her. For the first time in her life Emily Ffrench laughed out in a genuine, mischievous sense of adventure.

"Yes? I wonder you could separate yourself from that Rupert to come here; he was a most bewildering person," she retorted.

"Separate from Rupert? Why, I would not think of racing a taxicab, as he would say, without Rupert beside me. He is here taking a post-graduate course in this type of car, in order to be up to his work when we go down to Georgia next week."

"Next week? You expect to win that race?"

"No. We are running a stock car against some heavy foreign racing machines; the chance of winning is slight. But I hope to outrun any other American car on the course, if nothing goes wrong."

She looked up.

"And if something does?" she wondered.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Pray be careful of those moving belts behind you, Miss Ffrench. If something does—there is a chance in every game worth playing."

"A chance!" her feminine nerves recoiled from the implied consequences. "But only a chance, surely. You were never in an accident, never were hurt?"

Lestrange regarded her in surprise mingled with a dawning raillery infinitely indulgent.

"I had no accidents last season," he guardedly responded. "I've been quite lucky. At least Rupert and I play our game unhampered; there will be no broken hearts if we are picked up from under our car some day."

They had reached the door while he spoke; as he put his hand on the knob to open it, Emily saw a long zigzag scar running up the extended arm from wrist to elbow, a mute commentary on the conversation. In silence she passed out across the courtyard to where her red-wheeled cart waited. But when Lestrange had put her in and given her the reins, she held out her hand to him with more gravity.

"I shall wish you good luck for next week," she said.

Lestrange threw back his head, drawing a quick breath; here in the strong sunlight he showed even younger than she had thought him, young with a primitive intensity of just being alive.

"Thank you. I would like—if it were possible—to win this race."

"This one, especially?"

"Yes, because it is the next step toward a purpose I have set myself, and which I shall accomplish if I live. Not that I will halt if this step fails, no, nor for a score of such failures, but I am anxious to go on and finish."

Up to Emily's face rushed the answering color and fire to his; drawn by the bond of mutual earnestness, she leaned nearer.

"You live to do something? So do I, so do I! And every one else plays."

However Lestrange would have replied, he was checked by the crash of the courtyard gate. Abruptly recalled to herself, Emily turned, to see Dick Ffrench coming toward them.

Remembering how the three had last met, the situation suggested strain. But to Emily's astonishment the young men exchanged friendly nods, although Dick flushed pink.

"Good morning, Lestrange," he greeted. "I've just come up from the city, Emily, and there wasn't any carriage at the station, so when one of the testers told me you were here I came over to get a ride."

"I've been to see Mr. Bailey," she responded. "Get in."

As Dick climbed in beside her, she bent her head to Lestrange; if she had regretted her impulsive confidence, again the clear sanity and calm of the gray eyes she encountered established self-content.

When they were trotting down the road toward home, in the crisp air, Emily glanced at her cousin.

"I did not know you and Mr. Lestrange were so well acquainted," she remarked.

"I see him now and then," Dick answered uneasily. "He's too busy to want me bothering around him much. You—remembered him?"

"Yes."

He absently took the whip from its socket, flecking the horse with it as he spoke.

"It was awfully square of you, Emily, not to mention that night to Uncle Ethan. It wasn't like a girl, at all. I made an idiot of myself, and you've never said anything to me about it since. I never told you where Lestrange took me, because I didn't like to talk of the thing. I'm really awfully fond of you, cousin."

"Yes, Dickie," she said patiently.

"Well, Lestrange rubbed it in. Oh, he didn't say much. But he carried me down to where they were practising for a road race. Such a jolly lot of fellows, like a bunch of kids; teasing and calling jokes back and forth at one another half the night until daybreak, everything raw and chilly. Busy, and their mechanics busy, and one after another swinging into his car and going off like a rocket. By the time Lestrange went off, I was as much stirred up as anybody. When he made a record circuit at seventy-seven miles an hour average, I was shouting over the rail like a good one. And then, while he was off again, a big blue car rolled in and its driver yelled that Lestrange had gone over on the Eastbury turn, and to send around the ambulance. It was like a nightmare; I sat down on a stone and felt sick."

"He—"

"He shook me up half an hour later, and stood laughing at me. 'Upset?' he said. 'No; we shed a tire and went off into a field, but it didn't hurt the machine, so we righted her and came in.' He was limping and bruised and scratched, but he was laughing, while a crowd of people were trying to shake hands with him and say things. I felt—funny; as if I wasn't much good. I never felt like that before. 'This is only practise,' he said, when I was about to go. 'The race to-morrow will do better. We find it more exciting than cocktails.' That was all, but I knew what he meant, all right. I've been careful ever since. He won the race next day, too."

"Dick, didn't it ever occur to you that you as well as Mr. Lestrange might do real things?" she asked, after a moment.

He turned his round, good-humored face to her in boundless amazement.

"I? I race cars and break my neck and call it fun, like Lestrange? You're laughing at me, Emily."

"No, no," in spite of herself the picture evoked brought her smile. "Not like that. But you might be interested in the factory. You might learn from Mr. Bailey and take charge of the business with Uncle Ethan. It would please uncle, how it would please him, if you did!"

Dick stirred unhappily.

"It would take a lot of grind," he objected. "I haven't the head for it, really. I'm not such an awfully bad lot, but I hate work. Let's not be serious, cousin. How pretty the frosty wind makes you look!"

Emily tightened the reins with a brief sigh of resignation.

"Never mind, Dickie. I—uncle will find a substitute. Things must go on somehow, I suppose, even if we do not like the way."

But the way loomed distasteful that morning as never before.

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