His laughter suggested that he was entertained by mental visions. But he did not explain to his companion. His legal adviser was not in the least able to form any opinion of what he would do, how he would be likely to comport himself, when he was left entirely to his own devices. He would not know also, one might be sure, that the county would wait with repressed anxiety to find out. If he had been a minor, he might have been taken in hand, and trained and educated to some extent. But he was not a minor.

On the day of Mr. Palford's departure a thick fog had descended and seemed to enwrap the world in the white wool. Tembarom found it close to his windows when he got up, and he had dressed by the light of tall wax candles, the previous Mr. Temple Barholm having objected to more modern and vulgar methods of illumination.

"I guess this is what you call a London fog," he said to Pearson.

"No, not exactly the London sort, sir," Pearson answered. "A London fog is yellow—when it isn't brown or black. It settles on the hands and face. A fog in the country isn't dirty with smoke. It's much less trying, sir."

When Palford had departed and he was entirely alone, Tembarom found a country fog trying enough for a man without a companion. A degree of relief permeated his being with the knowledge that he need no longer endeavor to make suitable reply to his solicitor's efforts at conversation. He had made conversational efforts himself. You couldn't let a man feel that you wouldn't talk to him if you could when he was doing business for you, but what in thunder did you have to talk about that a man like that wouldn't be bored stiff by? He didn't like New York, he didn't know anything about it, and he didn't want to know, and Tembarom knew nothing about anything else, and was homesick for the very stones of the roaring city's streets. When he said anything, Palford either didn't understand what he was getting at or he didn't like it. And he always looked as if he was watching to see if you were trying to get a joke on him. Tembarom was frequently not nearly so much inclined to be humorous as Mr. Palford had irritably suspected him of being. His modes of expression might on numerous occasions have roused to mirth when his underlying idea was almost entirely serious. The mode of expression was merely a result of habit.

Mr. Palford left by an extremely early train, and after he was gone, Tembarom sat over his breakfast as long as possible, and then, going to the library, smoked long. The library was certainly comfortable, though the fire and the big wax candles were called upon to do their best to defy the chill, mysterious dimness produced by the heavy, white wool curtain folding itself more and more thickly outside the windows.

But one cannot smoke in solitary idleness for much more than an hour, and when he stood up and knocked the ashes out of his last pipe, Tembarom drew a long breath.

"There's a hundred and thirty-six hours in each of these days," he said. "That's nine hundred and fifty-two in a week, and four thousand and eighty in a month—when it's got only thirty days in it. I'm not going to calculate how many there'd be in a year. I'll have a look at the papers. There's Punch. That's their comic one."

He looked out the American news in the London papers, and sighed hugely. He took up Punch and read every joke two or three times over. He did not know that the number was a specially good one and that there were some extremely witty things in it. The jokes were about bishops in gaiters, about garden-parties, about curates or lovely young ladies or rectors' wives and rustics, about Royal Academicians or esthetic poets. Their humor appealed to him as little and seemed as obscure as his had seemed to Mr. Palford.

"I'm not laughing my head off much over these," he said. "I guess I'm not on to the point."

He got up and walked about. The "L" in New York was roaring to and fro loaded with men and women going to work or to do shopping. Some of them were devouring morning papers bearing no resemblance to those of London, some of them carried parcels, and all of them looked as though they were intent on something or other and hadn't a moment to waste. They were all going somewhere in a hurry and had to get back in time for something. When the train whizzed and slackened at a station, some started up, hastily caught their papers or bundles closer, and pushed or were pushed out on the platform, which was crowded with other people who rushed to get in, and if they found seats, dropped into them hastily with an air of relief. The street-cars were loaded and rang their bells loudly, trucks and carriages and motors filled the middle of the thoroughfares, and people crowded the pavements. The store windows were dressed up for Christmas, and most of the people crowded before them were calculating as to what they could get for the inadequate sums they had on hand.

The breakfast at Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house was over, and the boarders had gone on cars or elevated trains to their day's work. Mrs. Bowse was getting ready to go out and do some marketing. Julius and Jim were down-town deep in the work pertaining to their separate "jobs." They'd go home at night, and perhaps, if they were in luck, would go to a "show" somewhere, and afterward come and sit in their tilted chairs in the hall bedroom and smoke and talk it over. And he wouldn't be there, and the Hutchinsons' rooms would be empty, unless some new people were in them. Galton would be sitting among his papers, working like mad. And Bennett—well, Bennett would be either "getting out his page," or would be rushing about in the hundredth streets to find items and follow up weddings or receptions.

"Gee!" he said, "every one of them trying their best to put something over, and with so much to think of they've not got time to breathe! It'd be no trouble for THEM to put in a hundred and thirty-six hours. They'd be darned glad of them. And, believe me, they'd put something over, too, before they got through. And I'm here, with three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year round my neck and not a thing to spend it on, unless I pay some one part of it to give me lessons in tatting. What is tatting, anyhow?

He didn't really know. It was vaguely supposed to imply some intensely feminine fancy-work done by old ladies, and used as a figure of speech in jokes.

"If you could ride or shoot, you could amuse yourself in the country," Palford had said.

"I can ride in a street-car when I've got five cents," Tembarom had answered. " That's as far as I've gone in riding —and what in thunder should I shoot?"

"Game," replied Mr. Palford, with chill inward disgust. "Pheasants, partridges, woodcock, grouse—"

"I shouldn't shoot anything like that if I went at it," he responded shamelessly. "I should shoot my own head off, or the fellow's that stood next to me, unless he got the drop on me first."

He did not know that he was ignominious. Nobody could have made it clear to him. He did not know that there were men who had gained distinction, popularity, and fame by doing nothing in particular but hitting things animate and inanimate with magnificent precision of aim.

He stood still now and listened to the silence.

"There's not a sound within a thousand miles of the place. What do fellows with money DO to keep themselves alive?" he said piteously. "They've got to do SOMETHING. Shall I have to go out and take a walk, as Palford called it? Take a walk, by gee!"

He couldn't conceive it, a man "taking a walk" as though it were medicine—a walk nowhere, to reach nothing, just to go and turn back again.

"I'll begin and take in sewing," he said, "or I'll open a store in the village—a department store. I could spend something on that. I'll ask Pearson what he thinks of it— or Burrill. I'd like to see Burrill if I said that to him."

He decided at last that he would practise his "short" awhile; that would be doing something, at any rate. He sat down at the big writing- table and began to dash off mystic signs at furious speed. But the speed did not keep up. The silence of the great room, of the immense house, of all the scores of rooms and galleries and corridors, closed in about him. He had practised his "short" in the night school, with the "L" thundering past at intervals of five minutes; in the newspaper office, with all the babel of New York about him and the bang of steam-drills going on below in the next lot, where the foundation of a new building was being excavated; he had practised it in his hall bedroom at Mrs. Bowse's, to the tumultuous accompaniment of street sounds and the whizz and TING-A-LING of street-cars dashing past, and he had not been disturbed. He had never practised it in any place which was silent, and it was the silence which became more than he could stand. He actually jumped out of his chair when he heard mysterious footsteps outside the door, and a footman appeared and spoke in a low voice which startled him as though it had been a thunderclap.

"A young person with her father wants to see you, sir," he announced. "I don't think they are villagers, but of the working-class, I should say."

"Where are they?"

"I didn't know exactly what to do, sir, so I left them in the hall. The young person has a sort of quiet, determined way—"

"Little Ann, by gee!" exclaimed Tembarom with mad joy, and shot out of the room.

The footman—he had not seen Little Ann when she had brought Strangeways—looked after him and rubbed his chin.

"Wouldn't you call that a rummy sort for Temple Barholm?" he said to one of his fellows who had appeared in the hall near him.

"It's not my sort," was the answer. "I'm going to give notice to old Butterworth."

Hutchinson and Little Ann were waiting in the hall. Hutchinson was looking at the rich, shadowy spaces about him with a sort of proud satisfaction. Fine, dark corners with armored figures lurking in them, ancient portraits, carved oak settles, and massive chairs and cabinets—these were English, and he was an Englishman, and somehow felt them the outcome of certain sterling qualities of his own. He looked robustly well, and wore a new rough tweed suit such as one of the gentry might tramp about muddy roads and fields in. Little Ann was dressed in something warm and rough also, a brown thing, with a little close, cap-like, brown hat, from under which her red hair glowed. The walk in the cold, white fog had made her bloom fresh, soft-red and white-daisy color. She was smiling, and showing three distinct dimples, which deepened when Tembarom dashed out of the library.

"Hully gee!" he cried out, "but I'm glad to see you!"

He shook hands with both of them furiously, and two footmen stood and looked at the group with image-like calm of feature, but with curiously interested eyes. Hutchinson was aware of them, and endeavored to present to them a back which by its stolid composure should reveal that he knew more about such things than this chap did and wasn't a bit upset by grandeur.

"Hully gee!" cried Tembarom again, "how glad I am! Come on in and sit down and let's talk it over."

Burrill made a stately step forward, properly intent on his duty, and his master waved him back.

"Say," he said hastily, "don't bring in any tea. They don't want it. They're Americans."

Hutchinson snorted. He could not stand being consigned to ignominy before the footmen.

"Nowt o' th' sort," he broke forth. " We're noan American. Tha'rt losing tha head, lad."

"He's forgetting because he met us first in New York," said Little Ann, smiling still more.

"Shall I take your hat and cane, sir?" inquired Burrill, unmovedly, at Hutchinson's side.

"He wasn't going to say anything about tea," explained Little Ann as they went into the library. "They don't expect to serve tea in the middle of the morning, Mr. Temple Barholm."

"Don't they?" said Tembarom, reckless with relieved delight. "I thought they served it every time the clock struck. When we were in London it seemed like Palford had it when he was hot and when he was cold and when he was glad and when he was sorry and when he was going out and when he was coming in. It's brought up to me, by jinks! as soon as I wake, to brace me up to put on my clothes—and Pearson wants to put those on."

He stopped short when they reached the middle of the room and looked her over.

"O Little Ann!" he breathed tumultuously. "0 Little Ann!"

Mr. Hlutchinson was looking about the library as he had looked about the hall.

"Well, I never thought I'd get inside Temple Barlholm in my day," he exclaimed. "Eh, lad, tha must feel like bull in a china shop."

"I feel like a whole herd of 'em," answered Tembarom. Hutchinson nodded. He understood.

"Well, perhaps tha'll get over it in time," he conceded, "but it'll take thee a good bit." Then he gave him a warmly friendly look. "I'll lay you know what Ann came with me for to-day." The way Little Ann looked at him—the way she looked at him!

"I came to thank you, Mr. Temple Barholm," she said—"to thank you." And there was an odd, tender sound in her voice.

"Don't you do it, Ann," Tembarom answered. "Don't you do it."

"I don't know much about business, but the way you must have worked, the way you must have had to run after people, and find them, and make then listen, and use all your New York cleverness—because you ARE clever. The way you've forgotten all about yourself and thought of nothing but father and the invention! I do know enough to understand that, and it seems as if I can't think of enough to say. I just wish I could tell you what it means to me." Two round pearls of tears brimmed over and fell down her cheeks. "I promised mother FAITHFUL I'd take care of him and see he never lost hope about it," she added, "and sometimes I didn't know whatever I was going to do."

It was perilous when she looked at one like that, and she was so little and light that one could have snatched her up in his arms and carried her to the big arm-chair and sat down with her and rocked her backward and forward and poured forth the whole thing that was making him feel as though he might explode.

Hutchinson provided salvation.

"Tha pulled me out o' the water just when I was going under, lad. God bless thee!" he broke out, and shook his hand with rough vigor. "I signed with the North Electric yesterday."

"Good business!" said Tembarom. "Now I'm in on the ground floor with what's going to be the biggest money-maker in sight."

"The way tha talked New York to them chaps took my fancy," chuckled Hutchinson. "None o' them chaps wants to be the first to jump over the hedge."

"We've got 'em started now," exulted Tembarom.

"Tha started 'em," said Hutchinson, "and it's thee I've got to thank."

"Say, Little Ann," said Tembarom, with sudden thought, "who's come into money now? You'll have it to burn."

"We've not got it yet, Mr. Temple Barholm," she replied, shaking her head. "Even when inventions get started, they don't go off like sky- rockets."

"She knows everything, doesn't she?" Tembarom said to Hutchinson. "Here, come and sit down. I've not seen you for 'steen years."

She took her seat in the big arm-chair and looked at him with softly examining eyes, as though she wanted to understand him sufficiently to be able to find out something she ought to do if he needed help.

He saw it and half laughed, not quite unwaveringly.

"You'll make me cry in a minute," he said. " You don't know what it's like to have some one from home and mother come and be kind to you."

"How is Mr. Strangeways?" she inquired.

"He's well taken care of, at any rate. That's where he's got to thank you. Those rooms you and the housekeeper chose were the very things for him. They're big and comfortable, and 'way off in a place where no one's likely to come near. The fellow that's been hired to valet me valets him instead, and I believe he likes it. It seems to come quite natural to him, any how. I go in and see him every now and then and try to get him to talk. I sort of invent things to see if I can start him thinking straight. He's quieted down some and he looks better. After a while I'm going to look up some big doctors in London and find out which of 'em's got the most plain horse sense. If a real big one would just get interested and come and see him on the quiet and not get him excited, he might do him good. I'm dead stuck on this stunt I've set myself—getting him right. It's something to work on."

"You'll have plenty to work on soon," said Little Ann. "There's a lot of everyday things you've got to think about. They may seem of no consequence to you, but they ARE, Mr. Temple Barholm."

"If you say they are, I guess they are," he answered. "I'll do anything you say, Ann."

"I came partly to tell you about some of them to-day," she went on, keeping the yearningly thoughtful eyes on him. It was rather hard for her, too, to be firm enough when there was so much she wanted to say and do. And he did not look half as twinkling and light-heartedly grinning as he had looked in New York.

He couldn't help dropping his voice a little coaxingly, though Mr. Hutchinson was quite sufficiently absorbed in examination of his surroundings.

"Didn't you come to save my life by letting me have a look at you, Little Ann—didn't you?" he pleaded.

She shook her wonderful, red head.

"No, I didn't, Mr. Temple Barholm," she answered with Manchester downrightness. " When I said what I did in New York, I meant it. I didn't intend to hang about here and let you—say things to me. You mustn't say them. Father and me are going back to Manchester in a few days, and very soon we have to go to America again because of the business."

"America!" he said. "Oh, Lord!" he groaned. "Do you want me to drop down dead here with a dull, sickening thud, Ann? "

"You're not going to drop down dead," she replied convincedly. "You're going to stay here and do whatever it's your duty to do, now you've come into Temple Barholm."

"Am I?" he answered. "Well, we'll see what I'm going to do when I've had time to make up my mind. It may be something different from what you'd think, and it mayn't. Just now I'm going to do what you tell me. Go ahead, Little Ann."

She thought the matter over with her most destructive little air of sensible intentness.

"Well, it may seem like meddling, but it isn't," she began rather concernedly. "It's just that I'm used to looking after people. I wanted to talk to you about your clothes."

"My clothes?" he replied, bewildered a moment; but the next he understood and grinned. "I haven't got any. My valet—think of T. T. with a valet!—told me so last night."

"That's what I thought," she said maternally." I got Mrs. Bowse to write to me, and she told me you were so hurried and excited you hadn't time for anything."

"I just rushed into Cohen's the last day and yanked a few things off the ready-made counter."

She looked him over with impersonal criticism.

"I thought so. Those you've got on won't do at all."

Tembarom glanced at them.

"That's what Pearson says."

"They're not the right shape," she explained. "I know what a gentleman's clothes mean in England, and—" her face flushed, and sudden, warm spirit made her speak rather fast— "I couldn't ABIDE to think of you coming here and—being made fun of—just because you hadn't the right clothes."

She said it, the little thing, as though he were hers—her very own, and defend him against disrespect she WOULD. Tembarom, being but young flesh and blood, made an impetuous dart toward her, and checked himself, catching his breath.

"Ann," he said, "has your grandmother got a dog?"

"Y-e-s," she said, faltering because she was puzzled.

"How big is he?"

"He's a big one. He's a brindled bulldog. Why?"

"Well," he said, half pathetic, half defiant, "if you're going to come and talk to me like that, and look like that, you've got to bring that bull along and set him on me when I make a break; for there's nothing but a dog can keep me where you want me to stay—and a big one at that."

He sat down on an ottoman near her and dropped his head on his hands. It was not half such a joke as it sounded.

Little Ann saw it wasn't and she watched him tenderly, catching her breath once quickly. Men had ways of taking some things hard and feeling them a good bit more than one would think. It made trouble many a time if one couldn't help them to think reasonable.

"Father," she said to Hutchinson.

"Aye," he answered, turning round.

"Will you tell Mr. Temple Barholm that you think I'm right about giving him his chance?"

"Of course I think she's right," Hutchinson blustered, "and it isn't the first time either. I'm not going to have my lass married into any family where she'd be looked down upon."

But that was not what Little Ann wanted; it was not, in fact, her argument. She was not thinking of that side of the situation.

"It's not me that matters so much, Father," she said; "it's him."

"Oh, is it?" disagreed Hutchinson, dictatorially. "That's not th' road I look at it. I'm looking after you, not him. Let him take care of himself. No chap shall put you where you won't be looked up to, even if I AM grateful to him. So there you have it."

"He can't take care of himself when he feels like this," she answered. "That's WHY I'm taking care of him. He'll think steadier when he's himself again." She put out her hand and softly touched his shoulder.

"Don't do that," she said. "You make me want to be silly." There was a quiver in her voice, but she tried to change it. "If you don't lift your head," she added with a great effort at disciplinarian firmness, "I shall have to go away without telling you the other things."

He lifted his head, but his attempt at a smile was not hilarious.

"Well, Ann," he submitted, " I've warned you. Bring along your dog."

She took a sheet of paper out of one of the neat pockets in her rough, brown coat.

"I just wrote down some of the very best tailors' addresses —the very best," she explained. "Don't you go to any but the very best, and be a bit sharp with them if they're not attentive. They'll think all the better of you. If your valet's a smart one, take him with you."

"Yes, Ann," he said rather weakly. "He's going to make a list of things himself, anyhow."

"That sounds as if he'd got some sense." She handed him the list of addresses. "You give him this, and tell him he must go to the very best ones."

"What do I want to put on style for?" he asked desperately. "I don't know a soul on this side of the Atlantic Ocean."

"You soon will," she replied, with calm perspicacity. "You've got too much money not to."

A gruff chuckle made itself heard from Hutchinson's side of the room.

"Aye, seventy thousand a year'll bring th' vultures about thee, lad."

"We needn't call them vultures exactly," was Little Ann's tolerant comment; "but a lot of people will come here to see you. That was one of the things I thought I might tell you about."

"Say, you're a wonder!"

"I'm nothing of the sort. I'm just a girl with a bit of common sense— and grandmother's one that's looked on a long time, and she sees things. The country gentlemen will begin to call on you soon, and then you'll be invited to their houses to meet their wives and daughters, and then you'll be kept pretty busy."

Hutchinson's bluff chuckle broke out again.

"You will that, my lad, when th' match-making mothers get after you. There's plenty on 'em."

"Father's joking," she said. Her tone was judicially unprejudiced. "There are young ladies that—that'd be very suitable. Pretty ones and clever ones. You'll see them all."

"I don't want to see them."

"You can't help it," she said, with mild decision. "When there are daughters and a new gentleman comes into a big property in the neighborhood, it's nothing but natural that the mothers should be a bit anxious."

"Aye, they'll be anxious enough. Mak' sure o' that," laughed Hutchinson.

"Is that what you want me to put on style for, Little Ann?" Tembarom asked reproachfully.

"I want you to put it on for yourself. I don't want you to look different from other men. Everybody's curious about you. They're ready to LAUGH because you came from America and once sold newspapers."

"It's the men he'll have to look out for," Hutchinson put in, with an experienced air. "There's them that'll want to borrow money, and them that'll want to drink and play cards and bet high. A green American lad'll be a fine pigeon for them to pluck. You may as well tell him, Ann; you know you came here to do it."

"Yes, I did," she admitted. "I don't want you to seem not to know what people are up to and what they expect."

That little note of involuntary defense was a dangerous thing for Tembarom. He drew nearer.

"You don't want them to take me for a fool, Little Ann. You're standing up for me; that's it."

"You can stand up for yourself, Mr. Temple Barholm, if you're not taken by surprise," she said confidently. "If you understand things a bit, you won't be."

His feelings almost overpowered him.

"God bless your dear little soul!" he broke out. "Say, if this goes on, that dog of your grandmother's wouldn't have a show, Ann. I should bite him before he could bite me."

"I won't go on if you can't be sensible, Mr. Temple Barholm. I shall just go away and not come back again. That's what I shall do." Her tone was that of a young mother.

He gave in incontinently.

"Good Lord! no!" he exclaimed. "I'll do anything if you'll stay. I'll lie down on the mat and not open my mouth. Just sit here and tell me things. I know you won't let me hold your hand, but just let me hold a bit of your dress and look at you while you talk." He took a bit of her brown frock between his fingers and held it, gazing at her with all his crude young soul in his eyes. "Now tell me," he added.

"There's only one or two things about the people who'll come to Temple Barholm. Grandmother's talked it over with me. She knew all about those that came in the late Mr. Temple Barholm's time. He used to hate most of them."

"Then why in thunder did he ask them to come?"

"He didn't. They've got clever, polite ways of asking themselves sometimes. He couldn't bear the Countess of Mallowe. She'll come. Grandmother says you may be sure of that."

"What'll she come for?"

Little Ann's pause and contemplation of him were fraught with thoughtfulness.

"She'll come for you," at last she said.

"She's got a daughter she thinks ought to have been married eight years ago," announced Hutchinson.

Tembarom pulled at the bit of brown tweed he held as though it were a drowning man's straw.

"Don't you drive me to drink, Ann," he said. "I'm frightened. Your grandmother will have to lend ME the dog."

This was a flightiness which Little Ann did not encourage.

"Lady Joan—that's her daughter—is very grand and haughty. She's a great beauty. You'll look at her, but perhaps she won't look at you. But it's not her I'm troubled about. I'm thinking of Captain Palliser and men like him."

"Who's he?"

"He's one of those smooth, clever ones that's always getting up some company or other and selling the stock. He'll want you to know his friends and he'll try to lead you his way."

As Tembarom held to his bit of her dress, his eyes were adoring ones, which was really not to be wondered at. She WAS adorable as her soft, kind, wonderfully maternal girl face tried to control itself so that it should express only just enough to help and nothing to disturb.

"I don't want him to spoil you. I don't want anything to make you— different. I couldn't bear it."

He pulled the bit of dress pleadingly.

"Why, Little Ann?" he implored quite low.

"Because," she said, feeling that perhaps she was rash— "because if you were different, you wouldn't be T. Tembarom; and it was T. Tembarom that—that was T. Tembarom," she finished hastily.

He bent his head down to the bit of tweed and kissed it.

"You just keep looking after me like that," he said, "and there's not one of them can get away with me."

She got up, and he rose with her. There was a touch of fire in the forget-me-not blue of her eyes.

"Just you let them see—just you let them see that you're not one they can hold light and make use of." But there she stopped short, looking up at him. He was looking down at her with a kind of matureness in his expression. "I needn't be afraid," she said. "You can take care of yourself; I ought to have known that."

"You did," he said, smiling; "but you wanted to sort of help me. And you've done it, by gee! just by saying that thing about T. Tembarom. You set me right on my feet. That's YOU."

Before they went away they paid a visit to Strangeways in his remote, undisturbed, and beautiful rooms. They were in a wing of the house untouched by any ordinary passing to and fro, and the deep windows looked out upon gardens which spring and summer would crowd with loveliness from which clouds of perfume would float up to him on days when the sun warmed and the soft airs stirred the flowers, shaking the fragrance from their full incense-cups. But the white fog shut out to- day even their winter bareness. There were light and warmth inside, and every added charm of rich harmony of deep color and comfort made beautiful. There were books and papers waiting to be looked over, but they lay untouched on the writing-table, and Strangeways was sitting close to the biggest window, staring into the fog. His eyes looked hungry and hollow and dark. Ann knew he was "trying to remember" something.

When the sound of footsteps reached his ear, he turned to look at them, and rose mechanically at sight of Ann. But his expression was that of a man aroused from a dream of far-off places.

"I remember you," he said, but hesitated as though making an effort to recall something.

"Of course you do," said Little Ann. "You know me quite well. I brought you here. Think a bit. Little—Little—"

"Yes," he broke forth. "Of course, Little Ann! Thank God I've not forgotten." He took her hand in both his and held it tenderly. "You have a sweet little face. It's such a wise little face!" His voice sounded dreamy.

Ann drew him to his chair with a coaxing laugh and sat down by him.

"You're flattering me. You make me feel quite shy," she said. "You know HIM, too," nodding toward Tembarom.

"Oh, yes," he replied, and be looked up with a smile. "He is the one who remembers. You said you did." He had turned to Tembarom.

"You bet your life I do," Tembarom answered. "And you will, too, before long."

"If I did not try so hard," said Strangeways, thoughtfully. "It seems as if I were shut up in a room, and so many things were knocking at the doors—hundreds of them—knocking because they want to be let in. I am damnably unhappy— damnably." He hung his head and stared at the floor. Tembarom put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a friendly shake.

"Don't you worry a bit," he said. "You take my word for it. It'll all come back. I'm working at it myself." Strangeways lifted his head.

"You are the one I know best. I trust you." But there was the beginning of a slight drag in his voice. "I don't always —quite recollect—your name. Not quite. Good heavens! I mustn't forget that."

Little Ann was quite ready.

"You won't," she said, "because it's different from other names. It begins with a letter—just a letter, and then there is the name. Think."

"Yes, yes," he said anxiously.

Little Ann bent forward and fixed her eyes on his with concentrated suggestion. They had never risked confusing him by any mention of the new name. She began to repeat letters of the alphabet slowly and distinctly until she reached the letter T.

"T," she ended with much emphasis—"R. S. T."

His expression cleared itself.

"T," he repeated. "T—Tembarom. R, S, T. How clever you are!"

Little Ann's gaze concentrated itself still more intently.

"Now you'll never forget it again," she said, "because of the T. You'll say the other letters until you come to it. R, S, T."

"T. Tembarom," he ended relievedly. "How you help me!" He took her hand and kissed it very gently.

"We are all going to help you," Ann soothed him, "T. Tembarom most of all."

"Say," Tembarom broke out in an aside to her, "I'm going to come here and try things on him every day. When it seems like he gets on to something, however little a thing it is, I'm going to follow it up and see if it won't get somewhere."

Ann nodded.

"There'll be something some day," she said. "Are you quite comfortable here?" she asked aloud to Strangeways.

"Very comfortable, thank you," he answered courteously. "They are beautiful rooms. They are furnished with such fine old things. This is entirely Jacobean. It's quite perfect." He glanced about him. "And so quiet. No one comes in here but my man, and he is a very nice chap. I never had a man who knew his duties better."

Little Ann and Tembarom looked at each other.

"I shouldn't be a bit surprised," she said after they had left the room, "if it wouldn't be a good thing to get Pearson to try to talk to him now and then. He's been used to a man-servant."

"Yes," answered Tembarom. "Pearson didn't rattle HIM, you bet your life."



CHAPTER XIV

He could not persuade them to remain to take lunch with him. The firmness of Hutchinson's declination was not unconnected with a private feeling that "them footmen chaps 'u'd be on the lookout to see the way you handled every bite you put in your mouth." He couldn't have stood it, dang their impudence! Little Ann, on her part, frankly and calmly said, "It wouldn't DO." That was all, and evidently covered everything.

After they had gone, the fog lifted somewhat, but though it withdrew from the windows, it remained floating about in masses, like huge ghosts, among the trees of the park. When Tembarom sat down alone to prolong his lunch with the aid of Burrill and the footmen, he was confronted by these unearthly shapes every time he lifted his eyes to the window he faced from his place at the table. It was an outlook which did not inspire to cheerfulness, and the fact that Ann and her father were going back to Manchester and later to America left him without even the simple consolation of a healthy appetite. Things were bound to get better after a while; they were BOUND to. A fellow would be a fool if he couldn't fix it somehow so that he could enjoy himself, with money to burn. If you made up your mind you couldn't stand the way things were, you didn't have to lie down under them, with a thousand or so "per" coming in. You could fix it so that it would be different. By jinks! there wasn't any law against your giving it all to the church but just enough to buy a flat in Harlem out- right, if you wanted to. But you weren't going to run crazy and do a lot of fool things in a minute, and be sorry the rest of your life. Money was money. And first and foremost there was Ann, with her round cheeks flushed and her voice all sweet and queer, saying, "You wouldn't be T. Tembarom; and it was T. Tembarom that—that was T. Tembarom."

He couldn't help knowing what she had begun to say, and his own face flushed as he thought of it. He was at that time of life when there generally happens to be one center about which the world revolves. The creature who passes through this period of existence without watching it revolve about such a center has missed an extraordinary and singularly developing experience. It is sometimes happy, often disastrous, but always more or less developing. Speaking calmly, detachedly, but not cynically, it is a phase. During its existence it is the blood in the veins, the sight of the eyes, the beat of the pulse, the throb of the heart. It is also the day and the night, the sun, the moon, and the stars, heaven and hell, the entire universe. And it doesn't matter in the least to any one but the creatures living through it. T. Tembarom was in the midst of it. There was Ann. There was this new crazy thing which had happened to him—"this fool thing," as he called it. There was this monstrous, magnificent house,—he knew it was magnificent, though it wasn't his kind,—there was old Palford and his solemn talk about ancestors and the name of Temple Barholm. It always reminded him of how ashamed he had been in Brooklyn of the "Temple Temple" and how he had told lies to prevent the fellows finding out about it. And there was seventy thousand pounds a year, and there was Ann, who looked as soft as a baby,—Good Lord! how soft she'd feel if you got her in your arms and squeezed her!—and yet was somehow strong enough to keep him just where she wanted him to stay and believed he ought to stay until "he had found out." That was it. She wasn't doing it for any fool little idea of making herself seem more important: she just believed it. She was doing it because she wanted to let him "have his chance," just as if she were his mother instead of the girl he was clean crazy about. His chance! He laughed outright—a short, confident laugh which startled Burrill exceedingly.

When he went back to the library and lighted his pipe he began to stride up and down as he continued to think it over.

"I wish she was as sure as I am," he said. "I wish she was as sure of me as I am of myself—and as I am of her." He laughed the short, confident laugh again. "I wish she was as sure as I am of us both. We're all right. I've got to get through this, and find out what it's best to do, and I've got to show her. When I've had my chance good and plenty, us two for little old New York! Gee! won't it be fine!" he exclaimed imaginatively. "Her going over her bills, looking like a peach of a baby that's trying to knit its brows, and adding up, and thinking she ought to economize. She'd do it if we had ten million." He laughed outright joyfully. "Good Lord! I should kiss her to death!"

The simplest process of ratiocination would lead to a realization of the fact that though he was lonely and uncomfortable, he was not in the least pathetic or sorry for himself. His normal mental and physical structure kept him steady on his feet, and his practical and unsentimental training, combining itself with a touch of iron which centuries ago had expressed itself through some fighting Temple Barholm and a medium of battle-axes, crossbows, and spears, did the rest.

"It'd take more than this to get me where I'd be down and out. I'm feeling fine," he said. "I believe I'll go and 'take a walk,' as Palford says."

The fog-wreaths in the park were floating away, and he went out grinning and whistling, giving Burrill and the footman a nod as he passed them with a springing young stride. He got the door open so quickly that he left them behind him frustrated and staring at each other.

"It wasn't our fault," said Burrill, gloomily. "He's never had a door opened for him in his life. This won't do for me."

He was away for about an hour, and came back in the best of spirits. He had found out that there was something in "taking a walk" if a fellow had nothing else to do. The park was "fine," and he had never seen anything like it. When there were leaves on the trees and the grass and things were green, it would be better than Central Park itself. You could have base-ball matches in it. What a cinch it would be if you charged gate-money! But he supposed you couldn't if it belonged to you and you had three hundred and fifty thousand a year. You had to get used to that. But it did seem a fool business to have all that land and not make a cent out of it. If it was just outside New York and you cut it up into lots, you'd just pile it up. He was quite innocent—calamitously innocent and commercial and awful in his views. Thoughts such as these had been crammed into his brain by life ever since he had gone down the staircase of the Brooklyn tenement with his twenty-five cents in his ten-year-old hand.

The stillness of the house seemed to have accentuated itself when he returned to it. His sense of it let him down a little as he entered. The library was like a tomb—a comfortable luxurious tomb with a bright fire in it. A new Punch and the morning papers had been laid upon a table earlier in the day, and he sat down to look at them.

"I guess about fifty-seven or eight of the hundred and thirty- six hours have gone by," he said. "But, gee! ain't it lonesome!"

He sat so still trying to interest himself in "London Day by Day" in the morning paper that the combination of his exercise in the fresh air and the warmth of the fire made him drowsy. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes without being aware that he did so. He was on the verge of a doze.

He remained upon the verge for a few minutes, and then a soft, rustling sound made him open his eyes.

An elderly little lady had timidly entered the room. She was neatly dressed in an old-fashioned and far-from-new black silk dress, with a darned lace collar and miniature brooch at her neck. She had also thin, gray side-ringlets dangling against her cheeks from beneath a small, black lace cap with pale-purple ribbons on it. She had most evidently not expected to find any one in the room, and, having seen Tembarom, gave a half-frightened cough.

"I—I beg your pardon," she faltered. "I really did not mean to intrude—really."

Tembarom jumped up, awkward, but good-natured. Was she a kind of servant who was a lady?

"Oh, that's all right," he said.

But she evidently did not feel that it was all right. She looked as though she felt that she had been caught doing something wrong, and must properly propitiate by apology.

"I'm so sorry. I thought you had gone out—Mr. Temple Barholm."

"I did go out—to take a walk; but I came in."

Having been discovered in her overt act, she evidently felt that duty demanded some further ceremony from her. She approached him very timidly, but with an exquisite, little elderly early-Victorian manner. She was of the most astonishingly perfect type, though Tembarom was not aware of the fact. The manner, a century earlier, would have expressed itself in a curtsy.

"It is Mr. Temple Barholm, isn't it? " she inquired.

"Yes; it has been for the last few weeks," he answered, wondering why she seemed so in awe of him and wishing she didn't.

"I ought to apologize for being here," she began.

"Say, don't, please!" he interrupted. "What I feel is, that it ought to be up to me to apologize for being here."

She was really quite flurried and distressed.

"Oh, please, Mr. Temple Barholm!" she fluttered, proceeding to explain hurriedly, as though he without doubt understood the situation. "I should of course have gone away at once after the late Mr. Temple Barholm died, but—but I really had nowhere to go—and was kindly allowed to remain until about two months ago, when I went to make a visit. I fully intended to remove my little belongings before you arrived, but I was detained by illness and could not return until this morning to pack up. I understood you were in the park, and I remembered I had left my knitting-bag here." She glanced nervously about the room, and seemed to catch sight of something on a remote corner table. "Oh, there it is. May I take it?" she said, looking at him appealingly. "It was a kind present from a dear lost friend, and— and—" She paused, seeing his puzzled and totally non-comprehending air. It was plainly the first moment it had dawned upon her that he did not know what she was talking about. She took a small, alarmed step toward him.

"Oh, I BEG your pardon," she exclaimed in delicate anguish. "I'm afraid you don't know who I am. Perhaps Mr. Palford forgot to mention me. Indeed, why should he mention me? There were so many more important things. I am a sort of distant—VERY distant relation of yours. My name is Alicia Temple Barholm."

Tembarom was relieved. But she actually hadn't made a move toward the knitting-bag. She seemed afraid to do it until he gave her permission. He walked over to the corner table and brought it to her, smiling broadly.

"Here it is," he said. "I'm glad you left it. I'm very happy to be acquainted with you, Miss Alicia."

He was glad just to see her looking up at him with her timid, refined, intensely feminine appeal. Why she vaguely brought back something that reminded him of Ann he could not have told. He knew nothing whatever of types early-Victorian or late.

He took her hand, evidently to her greatest possible amazement, and shook it heartily. She knew nothing whatever of the New York street type, and it made her gasp for breath, but naturally with an allayed terror.

"Gee!" he exclaimed whole-heartedly, "I'm glad to find out I've got a relation. I thought I hadn't one in the world. Won't you sit down?" He was drawing her toward his own easy-chair. But he really didn't know, she was agitatedly thinking. She really must tell him. He seemed so good tempered and—and DIFFERENT. She herself was not aware of the enormous significance which lay in that word "different." There must be no risk of her seeming to presume upon his lack of knowledge.

"It is MOST kind of you," she said with grateful emphasis, "but I mustn't sit down and detain you. I can explain in a few words—if I may."

He positively still held her hand in the oddest, natural, boyish way, and before she knew what she was doing he had made her take the chair- -quite MADE her.

"Well, just sit down and explain," he said. "I wish to thunder you would detain me. Take all the time you like. I want to hear all about it—honest Injun."

There was a cushion in the chair, and as he talked, he pulled it out and began to arrange it behind her, still in the most natural and matter-of-fact way—so natural and matter-of-fact, indeed, that its very natural matter-of-factedness took her breath away.

"Is that fixed all right?" he asked.

Being a little lady, she could only accept his extraordinary friendliness with grateful appreciation, though she could not help fluttering a little in her bewilderment.

"Oh, thank you, thank you, Mr. Temple Barholm," she said.

He sat down on the square ottoman facing her, and leaned forward with an air of making a frank confession.

"Guess what I was thinking to myself two minutes before you came in? I was thinking, 'Lord, I'm lonesome—just sick lonesome!' And then I opened my eyes and looked— and there was a relation! Hully gee! I call that luck!"

"Dear me!" she said, shyly delighted. "DO you, Mr. Temple Barholm— REALLY?"

Her formal little way of saying his name was like Ann's.

"Do I? I'm tickled to death. My mother died when I was ten, and I've never had any women kin-folks."

"Poor bo—" She had nearly said "Poor boy!" and only checked the familiarity just in time—" Poor Mr. Temple Barholm!"

"Say, what are we two to each other, anyhow?" He put it to her with great interest.

"It is a very distant relationship, if it is one at all," she answered. "You see, I was only a second cousin to the late Mr. Temple Barholm, and I had not really the SLIGHTEST claim upon him." She placed pathetic emphasis on the fact. "It was most generous of him to be so kind to me. When my poor father died and I was left quite penniless, he gave me a—a sort of home here."

"A sort of home?" Tembarom repeated.

"My father was a clergyman in VERY straitened circumstances. We had barely enough to live upon—barely. He could leave me nothing. It actually seemed as if I should have to starve —it did, indeed." There was a delicate quiver in her voice. "And though the late Mr. Temple Barholm had a great antipathy to ladies, he was so—so noble as to send word to me that there were a hundred and fifty rooms in his house, and that if I would keep out of his way I might live in one of them."

"That was noble," commented her distant relative.

"Oh, yes, indeed, especially when one considers how he disliked the opposite sex and what a recluse he was. He could not endure ladies. I scarcely ever saw him. My room was in quite a remote wing of the house, and I never went out if I knew he was in the park. I was most careful. And when he died of course I knew I must go away."

Tembarom was watching her almost tenderly.

"Where did you go?"

"To a kind clergyman in Shropshire who thought he might help me."

"How was he going to do it?"

She answered with an effort to steady a somewhat lowered and hesitating voice.

"There was near his parish a very nice—charity,"—her breath caught itself pathetically,—"some most comfortable almshouses for decayed gentlewomen. He thought he might be able to use his influence to get me into one." She paused and smiled, but her small, wrinkled hands held each other closely.

Tembarom looked away. He spoke as though to himself, and without knowing that he was thinking aloud.

"Almshouses!" he said. "Wouldn't that jolt you!" He turned on her again with a change to cheerful concern. "Say, that cushion of yours ain't comfortable. I 'm going to get you another one." He jumped up and, taking one from a sofa, began to arrange it behind her dexterously.

"But I mustn't trouble you any longer. I must go, really," she said, half rising nervously. He put a hand on her shoulder and made her sit again.

"Go where?" he said. "Just lean back on that cushion, Miss Alicia. For the next few minutes this is going to be MY funeral."

She was at once startled and uncomprehending. What an extraordinary expression! What COULD it mean?

"F—funeral?" she stammered.

Suddenly he seemed somehow to have changed. He looked as serious as though he was beginning to think out something all at once. What was he going to say?

"That's New York slang," he answered. "It means that I want to explain myself to you and ask a few questions."

"Certainly, certainly, Mr. Temple Barholm."

He leaned his back against the mantel, and went into the matter practically.

"First off, haven't you ANY folks?" Then, answering her puzzled look, added, "I mean relations."

Miss Alicia gently shook her head.

"No sisters or brothers or uncles or aunts or cousins?"

She shook her head again.

He hesitated a moment, putting his hands in his pockets and taking them out again awkwardly as he looked down at her.

"Now here's where I'm up against it," he went on. "I don't want to be too fresh or to butt in, but—didn't old Temple Barholm leave you ANY money?"

"Oh, no!" she exclaimed. "Dear me! no! I couldn't possibly EXPECT such a thing."

He gazed at her as though considering the situation. "Couldn't you?" he said.

There was an odd reflection in his eyes, and he seemed to consider her and the situation again.

"Well," he began after his pause, "what I want to know is what you expect ME to do."

There was no unkindness in his manner, in fact, quite the contrary, even when he uttered what seemed to Miss Alicia these awful, unwarranted words. As though she had forced herself into his presence to make demands upon his charity! They made her tremble and turn pale as she got up quickly, shocked and alarmed.

"Oh, nothing! nothing! nothing WHATEVER, Mr. Temple Barholm!" she exclaimed, her agitation doing its best to hide itself behind a fine little dignity. He saw in an instant that his style of putting it had been "'way off," that his ignorance had betrayed him, that she had misunderstood him altogether. He almost jumped at her.

"Oh, say, I didn't mean THAT!" he cried out. "For the Lord's sake! don't think I'm such a Tenderloin tough as to make a break like that! Not on your life!"

Never since her birth had a male creature looked at Miss Alicia with the appeal which showed itself in his eyes as he actually put his arm half around her shoulders, like a boy begging a favor from his mother or his aunt.

"What I meant was—" He broke off and began again quite anxiously, "say, just as a favor, will you sit down again and let me tell you what I did mean?"

It was that natural, warm, boyish way which overcame her utterly. It reminded her of the only boy she had ever really known, the one male creature who had allowed her to be fond of him. There was moisture in her eyes as she let him put her back into her chair. When he had done it, he sat down on the ottoman again and poured himself forth. "You know what kind of a chap I am. No, you don't, either. You mayn't know a thing about me; and I want to tell you. I'm so different from everything you've ever known that I scare you. And no wonder. It's the way I've lived. If you knew, you'd understand what I was thinking of when I spoke just now. I've been cold, I've been hungry, I've walked the wet streets on my uppers. I know all about GOING WITHOUT. And do you expect that I am going to let a—a little thing like you—go away from here without friends and without money on the chance of getting into an almshouse that isn't vacant? Do you expect that of me? Not on your life! That was what I meant."

Miss Alicia quivered; the pale-purple ribbons on her little lace cap quivered.

"I haven't," she said, and the fine little dignity was piteous, "a SHADOW of a claim upon you." It was necessary for her to produce a pocket- handkerchief. He took it from her, and touched her eyes as softly as though she were a baby.

"Claim nothing!" he said. "I've got a claim on YOU. I'm going to stake one out right now." He got up and gesticulated, taking in the big room and its big furniture. "Look at all this! It fell on me like a thunderbolt. It's nearly knocked the life out of me. I'm like a lost cat on Broadway. You can't go away and leave me, Miss Alicia; it's your duty to stay. You've just GOT to stay to take care of me." He came over to her with a wheedling smile. "I never was taken care of in my life. Just be as noble to me as old Temple Barholm was to you: give me a sort of home."

If a little gentlewoman could stare, it might be said that Miss Alicia stared at him. She trembled with amazed emotion.

"Do you mean—" Despite all he had said, she scarcely dared to utter the words lest, after all, she might be taking for granted more than it was credible could be true. "Can you mean that if I stayed here with you it would make Temple Barholm seem more like HOME? Is it possible you—you mean THAT?"

"I mean just that very thing."

It was too much for her. Finely restrained little elderly gentlewoman as she was, she openly broke down under it.

"It can't be true!" she ejaculated shakily. "It isn't possible. It is too—too beautiful and kind. Do forgive me! I c-a-n't help it." She burst into tears.

She knew it was most stupidly wrong. She knew gentlemen did not like tears. Her father had told her that men never really forgave women who cried at them. And here, when her fate hung in the balance, she was not able to behave herself with feminine decorum.

Yet the new Mr. Temple Barholm took it in as matter-of- fact a manner as he seemed to take everything. He stood by her chair and soothed her in his dear New York voice.

"That's all right, Miss Alicia," he commented. "You cry as much as you want to, just so that you don't say no. You've been worried and you're tired. I'll tell you there's been two or three times lately when I should like to have cried myself if I'd known how. Say," he added with a sudden outburst of imagination, "I bet anything it's about time you had tea."

The suggestion was so entirely within the normal order of things that it made her feel steadier, and she was able to glance at the clock.

"A cup of tea would be refreshing," she said. "They will bring it in very soon, but before the servants come I must try to express—"

But before she could express anything further the tea appeared. Burrill and a footman brought it on splendid salvers, in massive urn and tea-pot, with chaste, sacrificial flame flickering, and wonderful, hot buttered and toasted things and wafers of bread and butter attendant. As they crossed the threshold, the sight of Miss Alicia's small form enthroned in their employer's chair was one so obviously unanticipated that Burrill made a step backward and the footman almost lost the firmness of his hold on the smaller tray. Each recovered himself in time, however, and not until the tea was arranged upon the table near the fire was any outward recognition of Miss Alicia's presence made. Then Burrill, pausing, made an announcement entirely without prejudice:

"I beg pardon, sir, but Higgins's cart has come for Miss Temple Barholm's box; he is asking when she wants the trap."

"She doesn't want it at all," answered Tembarom. "Carry her trunk up- stairs again. She's not going away."

The lack of proper knowledge contained in the suggestion that Burrill should carry trunks upstairs caused Miss Alicia to quail in secret, but she spoke with outward calm.

"No, Burrill," she said. "I am not going away."

"Very good, Miss," Burrill replied, and with impressive civility he prepared to leave the room. Tembarom glanced at the tea-things.

"There's only one cup here," he said. "Bring one for me."

Burrill's expression might perhaps have been said to start slightly.

"Very good, sir," he said, and made his exit. Miss Alicia was fluttering again.

"That cup was really for you, Mr. Temple Barholm," she ventured.

"Well, now it's for you, and I've let him know it," replied Tembarom.

"Oh, PLEASE," she said in an outburst of feeling—"PLEASE let me tell you how GRATEFUL—how grateful I am!"

But he would not let her.

"If you do," he said, "I'll tell you how grateful I am, and that'll be worse. No, that's all fixed up between us. It goes. We won't say any more about it."

He took the whole situation in that way, as though he was assuming no responsibility which was not the simple, inevitable result of their drifting across each other—as though it was only what any man would have done, even as though she was a sort of delightful, unexpected happening. He turned to the tray.

"Say, that looks all right, doesn't it?" he said. "Now you are here, I like the way it looks. I didn't yesterday."

Burrill himself brought the extra cup and saucer and plate. He wished to make sure that his senses had not deceived him. But there she sat who through years had existed discreetly in the most unconsidered rooms in an uninhabited wing, knowing better than to presume upon her privileges—there she sat with an awed and rapt face gazing up at this new outbreak into Temple Barholm's and "him joking and grinning as though he was as pleased as Punch."



CHAPTER XV

To employ the figure of Burrill, Tembarom was indeed "as pleased as Punch." He was one of the large number of men who, apart from all sentimental relations, are made particularly happy by the kindly society of women; who expand with quite unconscious rejoicing when a woman begins to take care of them in one way or another. The unconsciousness is a touching part of the condition. The feminine nearness supplies a primeval human need. The most complete of men, as well as the weaklings, feel it. It is a survival of days when warm arms held and protected, warm hands served, and affectionate voices soothed. An accomplished male servant may perform every domestic service perfectly, but the fact that he cannot be a woman leaves a sense of lack. An accustomed feminine warmth in the surrounding daily atmosphere has caused many a man to marry his housekeeper or even his cook, as circumstances prompted.

Tembarom had known no woman well until he had met Little Ann. His feeling for Mrs. Bowse herself had verged on affection, because he would have been fond of any woman of decent temper and kindliness, especially if she gave him opportunities to do friendly service. Little Ann had seemed the apotheosis of the feminine, the warmly helpful, the subtly supporting, the kind. She had been to him an amazement and a revelation. She had continually surprised him by revealing new characteristics which seemed to him nicer things than he had ever known before, but which, if he had been aware of it, were not really surprising at all. They were only the characteristics of a very nice young feminine creature.

The presence of Miss Alicia, with the long-belated fashion of her ringlets and her little cap, was delightful to him. He felt as though he would like to take her in his arms and hug her. He thought perhaps it was partly because she was a little like Ann, and kept repeating his name in Ann's formal little way. Her delicate terror of presuming or intruding he felt in its every shade. Mentally she touched him enormously. He wanted to make her feel that she need not be afraid of him in the least, that he liked her, that in his opinion she had more right in the house than he had. He was a little frightened lest through ignorance he should say things the wrong way, as he had said that thing about wanting to know what she expected him to do. What he ought to have said was, "You're not expecting me to let that sort of thing go on." It had made him sick when he saw what a break he'd made and that she thought he was sort of insulting her. The room seemed all right now that she was in it. Small and unassuming as she was, she seemed to make it less over-sized. He didn't so much mind the loftiness of the ceiling, the depth and size of the windows, and the walls covered with thousands of books he knew nothing whatever about. The innumerable books had been an oppressing feature. If he had been one of those "college guys" who never could get enough of books, what a "cinch" the place would have been for him—good as the Astor Library! He hadn't a word to say against books,—good Lord! no;—but even if he'd had the education and the time to read, he didn't believe he was naturally that kind, anyhow. You had to be "that kind" to know about books. He didn't suppose she— meaning Miss Alicia—was learned enough to make you throw a fit. She didn't look that way, and he was mighty glad of it, because perhaps she wouldn't like him much if she was. It would worry her when she tried to talk to him and found out he didn't know a darned thing he ought to.

They'd get on together easier if they could just chin about common sort of every-day things. But though she didn't look like the Vassar sort, he guessed that she was not like himself: she had lived in libraries before, and books didn't frighten her. She'd been born among people who read lots of them and maybe could talk about them. That was why she somehow seemed to fit into the room. He was aware that, timid as she was and shabby as her neat dress looked, she fitted into the whole place, as he did not. She'd been a poor relative and had been afraid to death of old Temple Barholm, but she'd not been afraid of him because she wasn't his sort. She was a lady; that was what was the matter with her. It was what made things harder for her, too. It was what made her voice tremble when she'd tried to seem so contented and polite when she'd talked about going into one of those "decayed alms- houses." As if the old ladies were vegetables that had gone wrong, by gee! he thought.

He liked her little, modest, delicate old face and her curls and her little cap with the ribbons so much that he smiled with a twinkling eye every time he looked at her. He wanted to suggest something he thought would be mighty comfortable, but he was half afraid he might be asking her to do something which wasn't "her job," and it might hurt her feelings. But he ventured to hint at it.

"Has Burrill got to come back and pour that out?" he asked, with an awkward gesture toward the tea-tray. "Has he just GOT to?"

"Oh, no, unless you wish it," she answered. "Shall—may I give it to you?"

"Will you?" he exclaimed delightedly. "That would be fine. I shall feel like a regular Clarence."

She was going to sit at the table in a straight-backed chair, but he sprang at her.

"This big one is more comfortable," he said, and he dragged it forward and made her sit in it. "You ought to have a footstool," he added, and he got one and put it under her feet. "There, that's all right."

A footstool, as though she were a royal personage and he were a gentleman in waiting, only probably gentlemen in waiting did not jump about and look so pleased. The cheerful content of his boyish face when he himself sat down near the table was delightful.

"Now," he said, "we can ring up for the first act."

She filled the tea-pot and held it for a moment, and then set it down as though her feelings were too much for her.

"I feel as if I were in a dream," she quavered happily. "I do indeed."

"But it's a nice one, ain't it? " he answered. "I feel as if I was in two. Sitting here in this big room with all these fine things about me, and having afternoon tea with a relation! It just about suits me. It didn't feel like this yesterday, you bet your life!"

"Does it seem—nicer than yesterday?" she ventured. "Really, Mr. Temple Barholm?"

"Nicer!" he ejaculated. "It's got yesterday beaten to a frazzle."

It was beyond all belief. He was speaking as though the advantage, the relief, the happiness, were all on his side. She longed to enlighten him.

"But you can't realize what it is to me," she said gratefully, "to sit here, not terrified and homeless and—a beggar any more, with your kind face before me. Do forgive me for saying it. You have such a kind young face, Mr. Temple Barholm. And to have an easy-chair and cushions, and actually a buffet brought for my feet! " She suddenly recollected herself. "Oh, I mustn't let your tea get cold," she added, taking up the tea-pot apologetically. "Do you take cream and sugar, and is it to be one lump or two?"

"I take everything in sight," he replied joyously, "and two lumps, please."

She prepared the cup of tea with as delicate a care as though it had been a sacramental chalice, and when she handed it to him she smiled wistfully.

"No one but you ever thought of such a thing as bringing a buffet for my feet—no one except poor little Jem," she said, and her voice was wistful as well as her smile.

She was obviously unaware that she was introducing an entirely new acquaintance to him. Poor little Jem was supposed to be some one whose whole history he knew.

"Jem?" he repeated, carefully transferring a piece of hot buttered crumpet to his plate.

"Jem Temple Barholm," she answered. "I say little Jem because I remember him only as a child. I never saw him after he was eleven years old."

"Who was he?" he asked. The tone of her voice, and her manner of speaking made him feel that he wanted to hear something more.

She looked rather startled by his ignorance. "Have you— have you never heard of him?" she inquired.

"No. Is he another distant relation?"

Her hesitation caused him to neglect his crumpet, to look up at her. He saw at once that she wore the air of a sensitive and beautifully mannered elderly lady who was afraid she had made a mistake and said something awkward.

"I am so sorry," she apologized. "Perhaps I ought not to have mentioned him."

"Why shouldn't he be mentioned?"

She was embarrassed. She evidently wished she had not spoken, but breeding demanded that she should ignore the awkwardness of the situation, if awkwardness existed.

"Of course—I hope your tea is quite as you like it—of course there is no real reason. But—shall I give you some more cream? No? You see, if he hadn't died, he—he would have inherited Temple Barholm."

Now he was interested. This was the other chap.

"Instead of me?" he asked, to make sure. She endeavored not to show embarrassment and told herself it didn't really matter—to a thoroughly nice person. But—

"He was the next of kin—before you. I'm so sorry I didn't know you hadn't heard of him. It seemed natural that Mr. Palford should have mentioned him."

"He did say that there was a young fellow who had died, but he didn't tell me about him. I guess I didn't ask. There were such a lot of other things. I'd like to hear about him. You say you knew him?"

"Only when he was a little fellow. Never after he grew up. Something happened which displeased my father. I'm afraid papa was very easily displeased. Mr. Temple Barholm disliked him, too. He would not have him at Temple Barholm."

"He hadn't much luck with his folks, had he?" remarked Tembarom.

"He had no luck with any one. I seemed to be the only person who was fond of him, and of course I didn't count."

"I bet you counted with him," said Tembarom.

"I do think I did. Both his parents died quite soon after he was born, and people who ought to have cared for him were rather jealous because he stood so near to Temple Barholm. If Mr. Temple Barholm had not been so eccentric and bitter, everything would have been done for him; but as it was, he seemed to belong to no one. When he came to the vicarage it used to make me so happy. He used to call me Aunt Alicia, and he had such pretty ways." She hesitated and looked quite tenderly at the tea-pot, a sort of shyness in her face. "I am sure," she burst forth, "I feel quite sure that you will understand and won't think it indelicate; but I had thought so often that I should like to have a little boy—if I had married," she added in hasty tribute to propriety.

Tembarom's eyes rested on her in a thoughtfulness openly touched with affection. He put out his hand and patted hers two or three times in encouraging sympathy.

"Say," he said frankly, "I just believe every woman that's the real thing'd like to have a little boy—or a little girl—or a little something or other. That's why pet cats and dogs have such a cinch of it. And there's men that's the same way. It's sort of nature."

"He had such a high spirit and such pretty ways," she said again. "One of his pretty ways was remembering to do little things to make one comfortable, like thinking of giving one a cushion or a buffet for one's feet. I noticed it so much because I had never seen boys or men wait upon women. My own dear papa was used to having women wait upon him—bring his slippers, you know, and give him the best chair. He didn't like Jem's ways. He said he liked a boy who was a boy and not an affected nincompoop. He wasn't really quite just." She paused regretfully and sighed as she looked back into a past doubtlessly enriched with many similar memories of "dear papa." "Poor Jem! Poor Jem!" she breathed softly.

Tembarom thought that she must have felt the boy's loss very much, almost as much as though she had really been his mother; perhaps more pathetically because she had not been his mother or anybody's mother. He could see what a good little mother she would have made, looking after her children and doing everything on earth to make them happy and comfortable, just the kind of mother Ann would make, though she had not Ann's steady wonder of a little head or her shrewd farsightedness. Jem would have been in luck if he had been her son. It was a darned pity he hadn't been. If he had, perhaps he would not have died young.

"Yes," he answered sympathetically, "it's hard for a young fellow to die. How old was he, anyhow? I don't know."

"Not much older than you are now. It was seven years ago. And if he had only died, poor dear! There are things so much worse than death."

"Worse!"

"Awful disgrace is worse," she faltered. She was plainly trying to keep moisture out of her eyes.

"Did he get into some bad mix-up, poor fellow?" If there had been anything like that, no wonder it broke her up to think of him.

It surely did break her up. She flushed emotionally.

"The cruel thing was that he didn't really do what he was accused of," she said.

"He didn't?"

"No; but he was a ruined man, and he went away to the Klondike because he could not stay in England. And he was killed—killed, poor boy! And afterward it was found out that he was innocent—too late."

"Gee!" Tembarom gasped, feeling hot and cold. "Could you beat that for rotten luck! What was he accused of?"

Miss Alicia leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. It was too dreadful to speak of aloud.

"Cheating at cards—a gentleman playing with gentlemen. You know what that means."

Tembarom grew hotter and colder. No wonder she looked that way, poor little thing!

"But,"—he hesitated before he spoke,—"but he wasn't that kind, was he? Of course he wasn't."

"No, no. But, you see,"—she hesitated herself here,—"everything looked so much against him. He had been rather wild." She dropped her voice even lower in making the admission.

Tembarom wondered how much she meant by that.

"He was so much in debt. He knew he was to be rich in the future, and he was poor just in those reckless young days when it seemed unfair. And he had played a great deal and had been very lucky. He was so lucky that sometimes his luck seemed uncanny. Men who had played with him were horrible about it afterward."

"They would be," put in Tembarom. " They'd be sore about it, and bring it up."

They both forgot their tea. Miss Alicia forgot everything as she poured forth her story in the manner of a woman who had been forced to keep silent and was glad to put her case into words. It was her case. To tell the truth of this forgotten wrong was again to offer justification of poor handsome Jem whom everybody seemed to have dropped talk of, and even preferred not to hear mentioned.

"There were such piteously cruel things about it," she went on. "He had fallen very much in love, and he meant to marry and settle down. Though we had not seen each other for years, he actually wrote to me and told me about it. His letter made me cry. He said I would understand and care about the thing which seemed to have changed everything and made him a new man. He was so sorry that he had not been better and more careful. He was going to try all over again. He was not going to play at all after this one evening when he was obliged to keep an engagement he had made months before to give his revenge to a man he had won a great deal of money from. The very night the awful thing happened he had told Lady Joan, before he went into the card-room, that this was to be his last game."

Tembarom had looked deeply interested from the first, but at her last words a new alertness added itself.

"Did you say Lady Joan? " he asked. " Who was Lady Joan?"

"She was the girl he was so much in love with. Her name was Lady Joan Fayre."

"Was she the daughter of the Countess of Mallowe?"

"Yes. Have you heard of her?"

He recalled Ann's reflective consideration of him before she had said, "She'll come after you." He replied now: "Some one spoke of her to me this morning. They say she's a beauty and as proud as Lucifer."

"She was, and she is yet, I believe. Poor Lady Joan—as well as poor Jem!"

"She didn't believe it, did she?" he put in hastily. "She didn't throw him down?"

"No one knew what happened between them afterward. She was in the card-room, looking on, when the awful thing took place."

She stopped, as though to go on was almost unbearable. She had been so overwhelmed by the past shame of it that even after the passing of years the anguish was a living thing. Her small hands clung hard together as they rested on the edge of the table. Tembarom waited in thrilled suspense. She spoke in a whisper again:

"He won a great deal of money—a great deal. He had that uncanny luck again, and of course people in the other rooms heard what was going on, and a number drifted in to look on. The man he had promised to give his revenge to almost showed signs of having to make an effort to conceal his irritation and disappointment. Of course, as he was a gentleman, he was as cool as possible; but just at the most exciting moment, the height of the game, Jem made a quick movement, and—and something fell out of his sleeve."

"Something," gasped Tembarom, "fell out of his sleeve!"

Miss Alicia's eyes overflowed as she nodded her beribboned little cap.

"It"—her voice was a sob of woe—"it was a marked card. The man he was playing against snatched it and held it up. And he laughed out loud."

"Holy cats! " burst from Tembarom; but the remarkable exclamation was one of genuine horror, and he turned pale, got up from his seat, and took two or three strides across the room, as though he could not sit still.

"Yes, he laughed—quite loudly," repeated Miss Alicia, "as if he had guessed it all the time. Papa heard the whole story from some one who was present."

Tembarom came back to her rather breathless.

"What in thunder did he do—Jem?" he asked.

She actually wrung her poor little hands.

"What could he do? There was a dead silence. People moved just a little nearer to the table and stood and stared, merely waiting. They say it was awful to see his face—awful. He sprang up and stood still, and slowly became as white as if he were dying before their eyes. Some one thought Lady Joan Fayre took a step toward him, but no one was quite sure. He never uttered one word, but walked out of the room and down the stairs and out of the house."

"But didn't he speak to the girl?"

"He didn't even look at her. He passed her by as if she were stone."

"What happened next?"

"He disappeared. No one knew where at first, and then there was a rumor that he had gone to the Klondike and had been killed there. And a year later—only a year! Oh, if he had only waited in England!—a worthless villain of a valet he had discharged for stealing met with an accident, and because he thought he was going to die, got horribly frightened, and confessed to the clergyman that he had tucked the card in poor Jem's sleeve himself just to pay him off. He said he did it on the chance that it would drop out where some one would see it, and a marked card dropping out of a man's sleeve anywhere would look black enough, whether he was playing or not. But poor Jem was in his grave, and no one seemed to care, though every one had been interested enough in the scandal. People talked about that for weeks."

Tembarom pulled at his collar excitedly.

"It makes me sort of strangle," he said. "You've got to stand your own bad luck, but to hear of a chap that's had to lie down and take the worst that could come to him and know it wasn't his—just KNOW it! And die before he's cleared! That knocks me out."

Almost every sentence he uttered had a mystical sound to Miss Alicia, but she knew how he was taking it, with what hot, young human sympathy and indignation. She loved the way he took it, and she loved the feeling in his next words

"And the girl—good Lord!—the girl?"

"I never met her, and I know very little of her; but she has never married."

"I'm glad of that," he said. "I'm darned glad of it. How could she?" Ann wouldn't, he knew. Ann would have gone to her grave unmarried. But she would have done things first to clear her man's name. Somehow she would have cleared him, if she'd had to fight tooth and nail till she was eighty.

"They say she has grown very bitter and haughty in her manner. I'm afraid Lady Mallowe is a very worldly woman. One hears they don't get on together, and that she is bitterly disappointed because her daughter has not made a good match. It appears that she might have made several, but she is so hard and cynical that men are afraid of her. I wish I had known her a little—if she really loved Jem."

Tembarom had thrust his hands into his pockets, and was standing deep in thought, looking at the huge bank of red coals in the fire-grate. Miss Alicia hastily wiped her eyes.

"Do excuse me," she said.

"I'll excuse you all right," he replied, still looking into the coals. "I guess I shouldn't excuse you as much if you didn't" He let her cry in her gentle way while he stared, lost in reflection.

"And if he hadn't fired that valet chap, he would be here with you now—instead of me. Instead of me," he repeated.

And Miss Alicia did not know what to say in reply. There seemed to be nothing which, with propriety and natural feeling, one could say.

"It makes me feel just fine to know I'm not going to have my dinner all by myself," he said to her before she left the library.

She had a way of blushing about things he noticed, when she was shy or moved or didn't know exactly what to say. Though she must have been sixty, she did it as though she were sixteen. And she did it when he said this, and looked as though suddenly she was in some sort of trouble.

"You are going to have dinner with me," he said, seeing that she hesitated—"dinner and breakfast and lunch and tea and supper and every old thing that goes. You can't turn me down after me staking out that claim."

"I'm afraid—" she said. "You see, I have lived such a secluded life. I scarcely ever left my rooms except to take a walk. I'm sure you understand. It would not have been necessary even if I could have afforded it, which I really couldn't—I'm afraid I have nothing— quite suitable—for evening wear."

"You haven't!" he exclaimed gleefully. "I don't know what is suitable for evening wear, but I haven't got it either. Pearson told me so with tears in his eyes. It never was necessary for me either. I've got to get some things to quiet Pearson down, but until I do I've got to eat my dinner in a tweed cutaway; and what I've caught on to is that it's unsuitable enough to throw a man into jail. That little black dress you've got on and that little cap are just 'way out of sight, they're so becoming. Come down just like you are."

She felt a little as Pearson had felt when confronting his new employer's entire cheerfulness in face of a situation as exotically hopeless as the tweed cutaway, and nothing else by way of resource. But there was something so nice about him, something which was almost as though he was actually a gentleman, something which absolutely, if one could go so far, stood in the place of his being a gentleman. It was impossible to help liking him more and more at every queer speech he made. Still, there were of course things he did not realize, and perhaps one ought in kindness to give him a delicate hint.

"I'm afraid," she began quite apologetically. "I'm afraid that the servants, Burrill and the footmen, you know, will be—will think—"

"Say," he took her up, " let's give Burrill and the footmen the Willies out and out. If they can't stand it, they can write home to their mothers and tell 'em they've got to take 'em away. Burrill and the footmen needn't worry. They're suitable enough, and it's none of their funeral, anyhow."

He wasn't upset in the least. Miss Alicia, who, as a timid dependent either upon "poor dear papa" or Mr. Temple Barholm, had been secretly, in her sensitive, ladylike little way, afraid of superior servants all her life, knowing that they realized her utterly insignificant helplessness, and resented giving her attention because she was not able to show her appreciation of their services in the proper manner— Miss Alicia saw that it had not occurred to him to endeavor to propitiate them in the least, because somehow it all seemed a joke to him, and he didn't care. After the first moment of being startled, she regarded him with a novel feeling, almost a kind of admiration. Tentatively she dared to wonder if there was not something even rather—rather ARISTOCRATIC in his utter indifference.

If be had been a duke, he would not have regarded the servants' point of view; it wouldn't have mattered what they thought. Perhaps, she hastily decided, he was like this because, though he was not a duke, boot-blacking in New York notwithstanding he was a Temple Barholm. There were few dukes as old of blood as a Temple Barholm. That must be it. She was relieved.

Whatsoever lay at the root of his being what he was and as he was, he somehow changed the aspect of things for her, and without doing anything but be himself, cleared the atmosphere of her dread of the surprise and mental reservations of the footmen and Burrill when she came down to dinner in her high-necked, much-cleaned, and much- repaired black silk, and with no more distinguishing change in her toilet than a white lace cap instead of a black one, and with "poor dear mamma's" hair bracelet with the gold clasp on her wrist, and a weeping-willow made of "poor dear papa's" hair in a brooch at her collar.

It was so curious, though still "nice," but he did not offer her his arm when they were going into the dining-room, and he took hold of hers with his hand and affectionately half led, half pushed, her along with him as they went. And he himself drew back her chair for her at the end of the table opposite his own. He did not let a footman do it, and he stood behind it, talking in his cheerful way all the time, and he moved it to exactly the right place, and then actually bent down and looked under the table.

"Here," he said to the nearest man-servant, "where's there a footstool? Get one, please," in that odd, simple, almost aristocratic way. It was not a rude dictatorial way, but a casual way, as though he knew the man was there to do things, and he didn't expect any time to be wasted.

And it was he himself who arranged the footstool, making it comfortable for her, and then he went to his own chair at the head of the table and sat down, smiling at her joyfully across the glass and silver and flowers.