over her flat bosom. "Then you'll wait just a
minute. I've got something downstairs I'd like to give you," she said.

"Why, of course, but won't you let me fetch it?"

"You'd never find it," she answered mysteriously, and hurried out while
he held the door open to light her down the dark staircase.

When her tread was heard at last on the landing below, Susan glanced at
the books that were still left on the shelves. "I'll pack the rest for
you to-morrow, Oliver, and your clothes, too. Have you any money?"

"A little left from selling my watch in New York. My clothes don't
amount to much. I've got them all in that bag, but I'll leave my books
in your charge until I can find a place for them."

"I'll take good care of them. O Oliver!" her face grew disturbed. "I
forgot all about my promise to Virginia that I'd bring you to see her
to-night."

"Well, I've no time to meet girls now, of course, but that doesn't mean
that I'm not awfully knocked up about it."

"I hate so to disappoint her."

"She won't think of it twice, the beauty!"

"But she will. I'm sure she will. Hush! Mother is coming."

As he turned to the door, it opened slowly to admit the figure of his
aunt, who was panting heavily from her hurried ascent of the stairs. Her
ill-humour toward Susan had entirely disappeared, for the only
resentment she had ever harboured for more than a few minutes was the
life-long one which she had borne her husband.

"It was not in the place where I had put it, so I thought one of the
servants had taken it," she explained. "Mandy was alone in my room
to-day while I was at dinner."

In her hand she held a small pasteboard box bearing a jeweller's
imprint, and opening this, she took out a roll of money and counted out
fifty dollars on the top of a packing-case. "I've saved this up for six
months," she said. "It came from selling some silver forks that belonged
to the Bolingbrokes, and I always felt easier to think that I had a
little laid away that he had nothing to do with. From the very day that
I married him, he was always close about money," she added.

The sordid tragedy--not of poverty, but of meanness--was in the gesture
with which she gathered up the notes and pressed them into his shrinking
hands. And yet Cyrus Treadwell was a rich man--the richest man living in
Dinwiddie! Oliver understood now why she was crushed--why she had become
the hopeless victim of the little troubles of life. "From the very day
of ou