any
freckles? And doesn't she speak with a brogue just like old Ann's?"

"This is the wildest thing I ever heard of," said her cousin. "I must
telegraph your mother and take you home at once."

She gasped. "Oh, you wouldn't do that? I'm not going home. I have run
away for good."

"Don't be a goose, little cousin."

"I hate home," she said hotly, "it's lonely, and I miss my little
brother. They won't let me go to school, and mother takes lessons from
an opera singer, and there is no quiet place to read. I never go to the
Top Floor where we used to play." She clung to his hand. "Let me stay,
Cousin Antony," she pleaded, "I want to live with you."

She coloured furiously and stopped. And Fairfax saw that she was like
his mother, and that the promises were fulfilled. Her low collar, edged
with fine lace, fell away from the pure young throat. Her mouth, piquant
and soft, half-coaxing and half-humorous, and her glorious eyes fast
losing the look of childhood, were becoming mysterious.

"You are too big a girl," he said sternly, "to talk such nonsense. You
are too old to be so silly, Bella. Why, your people must be insane with
anxiety."

But her people, as it turned out, were at Long Branch for the summer,
and Bella, presumably to go to the dentist, had come up to stay for a
day or two with the little Whitcomb ladies. She had chosen her time
well.

"No one knows where I am. The Whitcombs don't know I am coming to New
York, and the family think I am with Miss Eulalie and Miss Mitty."

"There is a train to New York," he said, "in half an hour."

"Oh," she cried, "Cousin Antony, how horrid! You've changed perfectly
dreadfully. I see it now. You used to be fond of me. I thought you were
fond of me. I don't want to force myself on you, Cousin Antony."

Fairfax was amazed, charmed and bewildered by her. What did Mrs. Kenny
think? He opened the door and called her, and said over his shoulder to
Bella--

"What did you tell the woman downstairs?"

Bella picked her hat up from the floor and wound the elastic around her
fingers. Her face clouded.

"Tell me," Antony urged, "what did you say to Mrs. Kenny?" He saw her
embarrassment, and repeated seriously: "For heaven's sake, Bella, tell
me."

"No," she whispered, "I can't."

He shrugged in despair. "Come, it can't be anything very dreadful. I've
got to know, you see."

The bell of the Catholic Church tolled out eight o'clock.

"Come, little cousin."

Half-defiant