ay fell to the floor.

"Tell me what it is about Aunt Caroline."

"She is not my mother any more, Cousin Antony, nor father's wife
either."

He waited. Bella's tone was low and embarrassed.

"I don't know how to tell it. She had a lovely voice, Cousin Antony."

"She had indeed, Bella."

"Well," slowly commented the young girl, "she took music lessons from a
teacher who sang in the opera, and I used to hear them at it until I
nearly lost my mind sometimes. I _hate music_--I mean that kind, Cousin
Antony."

"Well," he interrupted, impatient to hear the _denouement_. "What then,
honey?"

"One night at dinner-time mother didn't come home; but she is often
late, and we waited, and then went on without her.... She never came
home, and no one ever told me anything, not even old Ann. Father said I
was not to speak my mother's name again. And I never have, until now, to
you."

Fairfax took in his Bella's hands that turned the little rolled kid
gloves; they were cold. He bent his eyes on her. Young as she was, she
saw there and recognized compassion and human understanding, qualities
which, although she hardly knew their names, were sympathetic to her. He
bent his eyes on her.

"Honey," Fairfax said, "you have spoken your mother's name in the right
place. Don't judge her, Bella!"

"Oh!" exclaimed the young girl, crimsoning. She tossed her proud, dark
head. "I do judge her, Cousin Antony, I do."

"Hush!" he exclaimed sternly, "as you say, you are too young to
understand what she has done, but not too young to be merciful."

She snatched her hands away, and sprang up, her eyes rebellious.

"Why should I not judge her?" Her voice was indignant. "It's a disgrace
to my honourable father, to our name. How can you, Cousin Antony?"
Fairfax did not remove his eyes from her intense little face. "She was
never a mother to us," the young girl judged, with the cruelty of youth.
"Think how I ran wild! Do you remember my awful clothes? My things that
never met, the buttons off my shoes? Think of darling little Gardiner,
Cousin Antony...!"

Her cousin again bade her be silent. She stamped her foot passionately.

"But I will speak! Why should you take her part?"

With an expression which Bella felt to be grave, Fairfax repeated--

"You must not speak her name, as your father told you. It's a mighty
hard thing for one woman to judge another, little cousin. Wait until you
are a woman yourself."

Fairfax understood. He thoug