ollars from Fairfax, who, being a
pauper, had always money in his pocket; having in reality nowhere else
to keep it--and having none to keep elsewhere. The two dollar bill went
to join ghostly company with the drawing lessons money, and fluttered
away to the country of unpaid bills, of forgotten obligations, of
benefits forgot, and it is to be wondered if souls are ever at peace
there.

"Father," said Bella, "is the 'soul of honour.' When Ann comes to rub
Gardiner's feet at night (they are so often tired, Cousin Antony), she
told me about father's character. She's awfully Irish, you wouldn't
understand her. Father goes to 'board meetings' (I don't know what they
are, but they're very important) and they call him 'your honour,' and
Ann says it's all because of his soul. _He never breaks his word_, and
when the bills come in...."

The drawing lessons went bravely and wearily on day after day. Because
his aunt wished it, Fairfax guided Gardiner's inert fingers across the
page and almost tied Bella to her chair. On drawing days he lunched with
the household, and honestly earned his food. Half fed, keen with a
healthy appetite, he ate gratefully. They had been pausing at the end of
a half-hour's torture when Bella took up her monologue on her father's
character.

"When the bills come in he shuts himself in the library. I hear him walk
up and down; then he comes out with his face white, and once, long past
dinner-time, when mother didn't come in, he said to me, 'Where in
heaven's name is your mother? What can she find left in the shops to
buy?' just that, he asked me that, Cousin Antony. I felt awfully sorry.
I was just going to ask him for five cents, but I hadn't the heart."

That she had heart for her father, this child of twelve, and at so
tender an age could see and comprehend, could pity, struck Fairfax, and
on his part he began to see many things, but being a man and chivalrous,
he pitied the woman as well.

"My aunt is out of her element," he decided; "she cannot be in love with
her husband; no woman who loved anything on earth could gad about as she
does," and he wondered, and the deer in the park gazing at an artificial
wilderness became more and more of a symbol of her.

Regarding the man they called "his honour" Fairfax had not made up his
mind.

* * * * *

Gardiner developed scarlet fever and lay, so Mrs. Carew assured Antony,
"at the door of death," and Bella had been sen