As we talked the surgeon was at work on the arm of the young man.
“Let's go and get a bite to eat,” Richard proposed, and we made our escape.
While we were eating he said:
“Don't say anything of my part in this little scrap. I'm ashamed of it. To draw blood from him is like taking candy from a child.” At the hotel Richard found a cable that summoned him to New York. Late that afternoon Gwendolyn and her mother and Betsey went with him to the station where he took a train for the north. I bade the boy good-by and said as I did so:
“Leave the case in my hands again.”
“It's hopeless!” said he.
“Not exactly!” I answered.
“She has turned me down.”
“Turned you down?”
“Yes, I had a talk with her last evening.”