stay with
them you would be doing a real charity. They are dear little old maids
and self-supporting women. They sell their work in my women's exchange.
They have a nice little house."

Bella interrupted. "A dear little red-brick house, Cousin Antony, two
stories, on the next block."

She tucked her book under her arm as though it were a little trunk she
was tucking away to get ready to journey with him.

"The Whitcombs would be perfectly enchanted, Antony," urged his aunt,
"they want a lodger badly. It's Number 700, Madison Avenue."

"It looks like the house that Jack built," murmured Gardiner, dreamily;
"they have just wepainted it bwight wed with yellow doors...."

Fairfax thanked them and went, his heavy and his light step echoing on
the hard stairway of his kinsmen's inhospitable house. Bella watched him
from the head of the stairs, her book under her arm, and below, at the
door, he shouldered his bag and went out into the whirling, whirling
snow. It met him softly, like a caress, but it was very cold. Bella had
said two blocks away to the left, and he started blindly.

This was his welcome from his own people.

His Southern home seemed a million miles away; but come what would, he
would never return to it empty-handed as he had left it. He had been
thrust from the door where he felt he had a right to enter. That
threshold he would never darken again--never. A pile of unshovelled snow
blocked his path. As he crossed the street to avoid it, he looked up at
the big, fine house. From an upper window the shade was lifted, and in
the square of yellow light stood the two children, the little boy's head
just visible, and Bella, her dark hair blotting against the light, waved
to him her friendly, cousinly little hand. He forged on through the snow
to "The House that Jack built."

CHAPTER IV

He was the seventh son, and his mother was tired of child-bearing when
Antony was born. The others, mediocre, fine fellows, left to their
father's control, had turned out as well as children are likely to turn
out when brought up by a man. One by one, during the interval of years
before Antony came, one by one they had died, and when Mr. Fairfax
himself passed away, he left his wife alone with Antony a baby in her
arms. She then gave herself up to her grief and the contemplation of her
beauty. Adored, spoiled, an indifferent house-keeper, Mrs. Fairfax was,
nevertheless, what is known as a charming creature, and a sin