hen, two years later, the boy had come, come and drifted off to some
far place. It had been a bitter blow to Rose as well as to Harrison
Cressy, especially as they said there never could be any more children.
Rose grew frail, did not rally or regain her strength. They advised a
sanitarium in the Adirondacks for her. She had gone, but it had been of
no use. By the time they brought in the first gentians Rose had drifted
off after her little son. Carlotta and her father were alone.

By this time Harrison Cressy had begun to show the authentic Midas
touch. Only the little Carlotta stood between him and sheer, sordid
money grubbing. And even she was an excuse for the getting of always
more and more wealth. He told himself Carlotta should be a veritable
princess, should go always clad in the finest, have of the best, be
surrounded always by the most beautiful. She should know only joy and
light and laughter.

Thinking these thoughts, Carlotta's father sighed. For now at last
Carlotta wanted something he could not give her, was learning after
twenty-two years of cloudless joy the bitter way of tears. Why hadn't
that stubborn boy surrendered?

For that matter why didn't Carlotta surrender? This was a new idea to
Harrison Cressy. All the time he had been talking to Philip Lambert he
had been seeing Carlotta only in relation to Crest House and the Beacon
Street mansion. But just now he had been recalling her mother under very
different associations. Rose had been content with a tiny little cottage
set in a green yard gay with bright old fashioned flowers. He and Rose
had nested as happily as the orioles in the maples, especially after the
gold-haired baby came. Was Carlotta so different from Rose? Was her
happiness such a different kind of thing? Were women not pretty much
alike at heart? Did they not want about the same things?

Carlotta loved this lad of hers as Rose had loved himself. Was it her own
father who was cheating her out of happiness because he had taught her to
believe that money and limousines and great houses and many servants and
silken robes are happiness? If he had talked to her of other things, told
her about her mother and the happy old days among the lilacs and orioles,
with little but love to nest with, couldn't he have made her see things
more truly, shown her that love was the main thing, that money could not
buy happiness? One could not buy much of anything that was worth buying
Harrison Cressy thoug