t have known he had one,
only I saw the name of Alwyn Gaythorne in a book. 'I thought your
first name was John?' I said rather heedlessly.

"'So it is, John Alwyn,' he returned; 'that book belonged to my son,'
but his voice was so constrained that I did not venture to say more.
Depend upon it there is a mystery there, Marcus."

"'Perhaps Alwyn the younger is a Nihilist," returned Marcus, in a
teasing voice. "Probably he is at Portland at the present moment,
undergoing his sentence. No wonder poor Mr. Gaythorne is such a
recluse;" but Olivia refused to be entertained by this badinage.

"I am quite in earnest," she returned, with a grave air. "So you need
not trouble yourself to be ridiculous, Marcus. Why should he talk so
much of his daughter and never mention his only son?"

"According to you he is almost as silent on the subject of his wife."

"Oh, that is different," she answered, hastily. "He once said to me
that he could never bear even to hear her name mentioned, that it upset
him so. 'I was a happy man as long as she lived,' he said, so sadly,
'but it was all up with me when I lost her. She was a peacemaker, she
always kept things smooth; her name was Olivia too.'"

"Poor old boy," was Marcus's irrelevant remark at this.

"Yes, he is a strange mixture," went on Olivia, thoughtfully. "He has
an affectionate nature, but he is hard too; he could be terribly hard,
I am sure of that. And then see how good he is to those poor Traverses
and to Aunt Madge. Could anyone be more generous. And yet he is not
liberal by nature. That very day that he sent Mrs. Crampton to the
Models with all those good things--jellies and beef-tea and chicken and
actually two bottles of port wine--he was as angry as possible with
Phoebe, because she had broken his medicine glass. Mrs. Crampton had
orders to deduct the price of the glass from her wages. 'I always do
that,' he said to me, 'it teaches them to be careful,' but poor Phoebe
cried about it afterwards.

"'I call it real mean of master,' Phoebe had said; 'it is the first
thing that ever I broke in this house, and it was all through Eros
getting between my feet. It is not the few pence I mind, for we have
good wages paid down on the day, but I call it shabby of master to be
down on a poor servant-girl like that.'

"His servants don't seem to love him," went on Olivia. "They serve him
well, because it is their interest to do so, but even Mrs. Crampton,
who has b