stairs, there fell a heavy step and a light step, a light step and a heavy step. Bella never forgot the first time she heard those footfalls.
The lady at the table put her sewing down, and at that moment, behind the servant, a young man came in, a tall young man, holding out his hand and smiling a wonderful and beautiful smile.
"Aunt Caroline. I'm Antony Fairfax from New Orleans. I've just reached New York, and I came, of course, at once to you."
Not very much later, as they all stood about the table talking, Bella uncurled and once upon her feet, astonishingly tall for twelve years old, stood by Fairfax's side, while Gardiner, an old-fashioned little figure in queer home-made clothes, flushed, delicate and timid, leaned on his mother. The older woman had stopped sewing. With her work in her lap she was looking at the seventh son of her beautiful sister of whom she had been gently, mildly envious all her life.
Bella said brusquely: "You've got an awfully light smile, Cousin Antony."
He laughed. "I suppose that comes from an awfully light heart, little cousin!"
"Bella," her mother frowned, "don't be personal. You will learn not to mind her, Antony; she is frightfully spoiled."
The little girl threw back her hair. "And you've got one light step, Cousin Antony, and one heavy step. No one ever came up our stairs like that before. How do you do it?"
The stranger's face clouded. He had been looking at her with keen delight, and he was caught up short at her words. He put out his deformed shoe.
"This is the heavy step."
Bella's cheeks had been flushed with excitement, but the dark red that rose at Fairfax's words made her look like a little Indian.
"Oh, I didn't know!" she stammered. "I didn't know."
Her cousin comforted her cheerfully. "That's all right. I don't mind. I fell from a cherry tree when I was a little chap and I've stumped about ever since."
His aunt's gentle voice, indifferent and soft, like Gardiner's murmured —
"Oh, don't listen to her, Antony, she's a spoiled, inconsiderate little girl."
But Bella had drawn nearer the stranger. She leaned on the table close to him and lifted her face in which her eyes shone like stars. She had wounded him, and it didn't seem to her generous little heart that she could quite let it go. And under her breath she whispered —
"But there's the light step, isn't there, Cousin Antony? And the smile – the awfully light smile?"
Fairfax laughed and leaned forward as though he would catch her, but she had escaped from under his hand like an elusive fairy, and when he next saw her she was back in her corner with her book on her knees and her dark hair covering her face.
CHAPTER III
He talked with his aunt for a long while. Her grace and dignity suggested his mother, but she was not so lovely as the other woman, whose memory was always thrilling to him. Fairfax ran eagerly on, on fire with his subject, finally stopping himself with a laugh.
"I reckon I'm boring you to death, Aunt Caroline."
"Oh, no," she breathed, "how can you say so? How proud she must be of you!"
Downstairs in the hall he had left his valise and his little hand satchel, with the snow melting on them. He came from a household whose hospitality was as large, as warm, as bright as the sun. He had made a stormy passage by the packet Nore. His head was beginning to whirl. From the sofa there was not a sign. Bella read ardently, her hand pressing a lock of her dark hair across her burning cheek. Gardiner, his eyes on his cousin, drank in, fascinated, the figure of the big, handsome young man.
"He's my relation," he said to himself. "He's one of our family. I know he can tell stories, and he's a traveller. He came in the fairy cars."
Mrs. Carew tapped her lip with her thimble. "So you will learn to model here," she murmured. "Now I wonder who would be the best man?"
And Fairfax responded quickly, "Cedersholm, auntie, he's the only man."
"My husband," his aunt began to blush, "your uncle knows Mr. Cedersholm in the Century Club, but I hardly think…"
Antony threw up his bright head. "I have brought a letter from the President to Cedersholm and several of the little figures I have modelled."
"Ah, that will be better," and his aunt breathed with relief. Mrs. Carew's mention of her husband came to Antony like a sharp chill. Nothing that had been told him of the New York banker who had married his gentle aunt was calculated to inspire him with a sense of kinship. It was as though a window had been opened into the bright room. A slight noise at the door downstairs acted like a current of alarm upon the family. The colour left his aunt's cheeks, and little Gardiner exclaimed, "I hear father's key." The child came over to his mother's side. It seemed discourteous to Antony to suggest going just as his uncle arrived, so he waited a moment in the strange silence that fell over the group. In a few seconds Mr. Carew came in and his wife presented. "My dear, this is Antony Fairfax, my sister Bella's only child, you know. You remember Bella, Henry."
A wave of red, which must have been vigorous in order to sweep in and under the ruddy colour already in Carew's cheeks, testified that he did remember the beautiful Mrs. Fairfax.
"I remember her very well," he returned; "is she as handsome as ever? You have chosen a cold day to land in the North. I presume you came by boat? We have been two hours coming up town. The cars are blocked by snow. It's ten degrees below zero to-night. I wish you would see that ashes are poured on the front steps, Caroline, at once."
The guest put out his hand. "I must be going. Good night, Aunt Caroline – good night, Gardiner. Good night, sir."
Fairfax marked the ineffectuality in his aunt's face. It was neither embarrassment nor shame, it was impotence. Her expression was not appealing, but inadequate, and the slender hand that she gave him melted in his like the snow. There was no grasp there, no stimulus to go on. He turned to the red figure of the huddled child in the sofa corner.
"Good night, little cousin."
Bella dropped her book and sprang up. "Good night," she cried; "why, you're not going, Cousin Antony?"
And as the older woman had done she extended her hand. It was only a small child's hand, but the essential was there. The same sex but with a different hand. It did not melt in Antony's; it lay, it clasped, lost in his big palm. He felt, nevertheless, the vital little grasp, its warmth and sweetness against his hand.
"Where are you going?"
Mr. Carew had passed out now that he had successfully eliminated from the mind of the guest any idea that hospitality was to be extended. Once more the little group were by themselves.
"There is the Buckingham Hotel," Mrs. Carew ventured. "It's an excellent hotel; we get croquettes from there when Gardiner's appetite flags. The children have their hair cut there as well."
Tired as Fairfax was, rebuffed as he was, he could not but be cheered by the bright look of the little girl who stood between him and her mother. She nodded at her cousin.
"Why, the Buckingham is six dollars a day," she said. "I asked the barber when he cut Gardiner's hair."
Fairfax smiled. "I reckon that is a little steep, Bella."
"It's
