d by this obliquity in
a man customarily so direct.

"It's about Lady Newland," he finally said. And the solemnity of his
face rather frightened me.

"She's not dead?" I asked in a breath.

Peter shook his head from side to side.

"She's been rather badly hurt," he said, after several moments of
silence. "Her plane was winged yesterday afternoon by a navy flier
over San Diego Bay. She didn't fall, but it was a forced landing and
her machine had taken fire before they could get her out of her seat."

"You mean she was burnt?" I cried, chilled by the horror of it.

And, inapposite as it seemed, my thoughts flashed back to that lithe
and buoyant figure, and then to the picture of it charred and scorched
and suffering.

"Only her face," was Peter's quiet and very deliberate reply.

"Only her face," I repeated, not quite understanding him.

"The men from the North Bay field had her out a minute or two after
she landed. But practically the whole plane was afire. Her heavy
flying coat and gauntlets saved her body and hands. But her face was
unprotected. She--"

"Do you mean she'll be _disfigured_?" I asked, remembering the
loveliness of that face with its red and wilful lips and its
ever-changing tourmaline eyes.

"I'm afraid so," was Peter's answer. "But I've been wiring, and you'll
be quite safe in telling your husband that she's in no actual danger.
The Marine Hospital officials have acknowledged that no flame was
inhaled, that it's merely temporary shock, and, of course, the
face-burn."

"But what can they do?" I asked, in little more than a whisper.

"They're trying the new ambersine treatment, and later on, I suppose,
they can rely on skin-grafting and facial surgery," Peter explained to
me.

"Is it that bad?" I asked, sitting down in one of the empty chairs,
for the mere effort to vision any such disfigurement had brought a
Channel-crossing and Calais-packet feeling to me.

"It's very sad," said Peter, more ill-at-ease than I'd ever seen him
before, "But there's positively no danger, remember. It won't be so bad
as your morning paper will try to make it out. They've sensationalized
it, of course. That's why I wanted to be here first, and give you the
facts. They are distressing enough, God knows, without those yellow
reporters working them over for wire consumption."

I was glad that Peter didn't offer to stay, didn't even seem to wish
to stay. I wanted quietness and time to think the thing over.
D