Derrick flung himself into a chair, feeling rather dubious about his strength, all at once.
"Do I?" he said, with a faint smile. "Don't be alarmed, Grace, I have no doubt I look as I feel. I have been having a brush with that scoundrel Lowrie, and I believe something has happened to my wrist."
He made an effort to raise his left hand and failed, succumbing to a pain so intense that it forced an exclamation from him.
"I thought it was a sprain," he said, when he recovered himself, "but it is a job for a surgeon. It is broken."
And so it proved under the examination of the nearest practitioner, and then Derrick remembered a wrench and shock which he had felt in Lowrie's last desperate effort to recover himself. Some of the small bones had broken.
Grace called in the surgeon himself, and stood by during the strapping and bandaging with an anxious face, really suffering as much as Derrick, perhaps a trifle more. He would not hear of his going home that night, but insisted that he should remain where he was.
"I can sleep on the lounge myself," he protested. "And though I shall be obliged to leave you for half an hour, I assure you I shall not be away a longer time."
"Where are you going?" asked Derrick.
"To the Rectory. Mr. Barholm sent a message an hour ago, that he wished to see me upon business."
Fergus agreed to remain. When Grace was on the point of leaving the room, he turned his head.
"You are going to the Rectory, you say?" he remarked.
"Yes."
"Do you think you shall see Anice?"
