s who count.

Halcyone's delicate sense of obligation had been put at ease by her
stepfather. He had made over to her a few hundreds a year which he said
had belonged to her mother--the simple creature was too ignorant of all
business to be aware whether this was or was not the case. She had grown
to have a certain liking for James Anderton. There was a hard,
level-headed, shrewd honesty about him, keen to drive a bargain--even
the one about her mother to which Priscilla had alluded and to which
they had never made any further reference--but, when once he had gained
his point, he was generous and kind-hearted.

He could not help it that he was not a gentleman, Halcyone thought, and
he did his best for everybody according to his lights.

Her few hundreds a year seemed untold wealth to her who had never had
even a few sixpences for pocket money! But there was always some
instinctive dislike for the thing itself. It remained to her a rather
unpleasant medium for securing the necessities of life, though she was
glad she now possessed enough not to be a burden upon her aunts, and
could hand what was necessary for her trip over to the Professor.

They wanted to get into Italy as soon as it should be cool enough.
August saw them in an out-of-the-way village in Switzerland.

And the mountains caused Halcyone a yet deeper emotion than the sea had
done. Nature here talked to her in a voice of supreme grandeur, and bade
her never to be cast down but to go on bearing her winter with heroic
calm.

She often stayed out the entire night and watched the stars fade and the
dawn come--Phoebus with his sun chariot! Somehow Switzerland, although
it was not at all the actual background, seemed to bring to her the
atmosphere of her "Heroes." The lower hill near their village could
certainly be Pelion, and one day she felt she had discovered Cheiron's
cave. This was a joy--and that night, when it rained and she and the
Professor sat before their wood fire in the little inn parlor, with
Aphrodite lying near them in her silken folds, she coaxed her old master
into telling her those moving tales of old.

"You are indeed Cheiron, Master," she said--and then her eyes widened
and she looked into the glowing ashes. "And you have one pupil, who,
like Heracles in his fight with the Centaurs, has accidentally wounded
you. But I want you not to let the poison of the arrow grow in your
blood; the wound is not incurable as his was. Master, why do y