lmost
invariably dropped into a short, cold, curt, business manner. Yet he
was humanely inclined in this instance.

"Well, then, why not live in your Pennsylvania place for the present,
or, if not that, go to New York? You can't stay here. Ship or sell
these things." He waved a hand toward the rooms.

"I would only too gladly," replied Mrs. Carter, "if I knew what to do."

"Take my advice and go to New York for the present. You will get rid
of your expenses here, and I will help you with the rest--for the
present, anyhow. You can get a start again. It is too bad about these
children of yours. I will take care of the boy as soon as he is old
enough. As for Berenice"--he used her name softly--"if she can stay in
her school until she is nineteen or twenty the chances are that she
will make social connections which will save her nicely. The thing for
you to do is to avoid meeting any of this old crowd out here in the
future if you can. It might be advisable to take her abroad for a time
after she leaves school."

"Yes, if I just could," sighed Mrs. Carter, rather lamely.

"Well, do what I suggest now, and we will see," observed Cowperwood.
"It would be a pity if your two children were to have their lives
ruined by such an accident as this."

Mrs. Carter, realizing that here, in the shape of Cowperwood, if he
chose to be generous, was the open way out of a lowering dungeon of
misery, was inclined to give vent to a bit of grateful emotion, but,
finding him subtly remote, restrained herself. His manner, while
warmly generous at times, was also easily distant, except when he
wished it to be otherwise. Just now he was thinking of the high soul
of Berenice Fleming and of its possible value to him.

Chapter XLI

The Daughter of Mrs. Fleming

Berenice Fleming, at the time Cowperwood first encountered her mother,
was an inmate of the Misses Brewster's School for Girls, then on
Riverside Drive, New York, and one of the most exclusive establishments
of its kind in America. The social prestige and connections of the
Heddens, Flemings, and Carters were sufficient to gain her this
introduction, though the social fortunes of her mother were already at
this time on the down grade. A tall girl, delicately haggard, as he
had imagined her, with reddish-bronze hair of a tinge but distantly
allied to that of Aileen's, she was unlike any woman Cowperwood had
ever known. Even at seventeen she stood up and out with a