The taxi-driver was an old Irishman with sideburns and a mouth which had not gone shut since he had encountered the accident. She sat in front with him and heard his story on the way. He had been going down the long stretch of road in Wayland when he had encountered the wreck—car in the ditch, young man with bloody face and one arm hanging loose, trying to pull the young lady from beneath scatterings of glass that had been the wind shield. The young man was so distraught-like he wouldn’t even have heard a car go by, but he had pulled up and offered help. Together they had taken away the glass embracing Félicie and carried her to the taxi.
“_Glass!_” cried Joy. “Did it—is her face——”
“I dunno, Miss. Couldn’t see much of it for blood.” And he resumed his narration. The nearest hospital he knew was the River Hill, and they had driven there. It was private, and it was not their custom to take accident cases, but in the face of this piteous spectacle they could not refuse admittance.
River Hill was on the outskirts of Brighton, and they had scaled the hill almost before he finished the story. She paid him, with no time to reflect that he had been paid in advance, no room for anything but the horror of supposition, as she was admitted.
Hal Jennings was in the ante room off from the hall—his arm in a sling and a bandage over one side of his face.
“Félicie!” Joy cried, without preface. “Was she cut? Did anything happen to _her face_?”
“That’s what’s so terrible,” he said, looking away from her after his first rush of relieved recognition. “My God, Miss Nelson,—it’s—it looked as if it were cut to pieces.”
Félicie’s face! That glory and wonder of perfection—cut to pieces! _What would be left?_ Her senses reeled.
“Where are the doctors? Where are they? I must see them. What do they say?”
“They’re with her now. They’re coming down here—as soon as they finish.”
She looked at him, acknowledging his injuries for the first time. “You weren’t hurt badly?”
“No.” He brushed his affairs aside. “What did you do—about notifying people?”
“I didn’t wake Madame Durant. I wired her—her fiancé.”
“Her—fiancé!” He took a step back. “I didn’t know she was engaged.”
“She—isn’t,” mumbled Joy. “But it’s the man she loves and who loves her and they intend to get married some day—what _do_ they call it nowadays?”