her dark hair covering her face.

CHAPTER III

He talked with his aunt for a long while. Her grace and dignity
suggested his mother, but she was not so lovely as the other woman,
whose memory was always thrilling to him. Fairfax ran eagerly on, on
fire with his subject, finally stopping himself with a laugh.

"I reckon I'm boring you to death, Aunt Caroline."

"Oh, no," she breathed, "how can you say so? How proud she must be of
you!"

Downstairs in the hall he had left his valise and his little hand
satchel, with the snow melting on them. He came from a household whose
hospitality was as large, as warm, as bright as the sun. He had made a
stormy passage by the packet _Nore_. His head was beginning to whirl.
From the sofa there was not a sign. Bella read ardently, her hand
pressing a lock of her dark hair across her burning cheek. Gardiner, his
eyes on his cousin, drank in, fascinated, the figure of the big,
handsome young man.

"He's my relation," he said to himself. "He's one of our family. I know
he can tell stories, and he's a traveller. He came in the fairy cars."

Mrs. Carew tapped her lip with her thimble. "So you will learn to model
here," she murmured. "Now I wonder who would be the best man?"

And Fairfax responded quickly, "Cedersholm, auntie, he's the only man."

"My husband," his aunt began to blush, "your uncle knows Mr. Cedersholm
in the Century Club, but I hardly think...."

Antony threw up his bright head. "I have brought a letter from the
President to Cedersholm and several of the little figures I have
modelled."

"Ah, that will be better," and his aunt breathed with relief. Mrs.
Carew's mention of her husband came to Antony like a sharp chill.
Nothing that had been told him of the New York banker who had married
his gentle aunt was calculated to inspire him with a sense of kinship.
It was as though a window had been opened into the bright room. A slight
noise at the door downstairs acted like a current of alarm upon the
family. The colour left his aunt's cheeks, and little Gardiner
exclaimed, "I hear father's key." The child came over to his mother's
side. It seemed discourteous to Antony to suggest going just as his
uncle arrived, so he waited a moment in the strange silence that fell
over the group. In a few seconds Mr. Carew came in and his wife
presented. "My dear, this is Antony Fairfax, my sister Bella's only
child, you know. You remember Bella, Henry."

A wave of red, whi