ay and astonishment.
His horror when they pressed an immediate marriage, so that Fay might go
out with Hugo in November. And his final giving-in to everything Fay
wanted because Fay wanted it.

Did her father really like Hugo Tancred? she wondered. And then came the
certainty that he wouldn't ever have liked anybody much who wanted to
marry either of them; but he was far too just and too imaginative to
stand in the way where, what seemed, the happiness of his daughter was
concerned.

"What a gamble it all is," thought Jan, and felt inclined to thank
heaven that she was neither so fascinating nor as susceptible as Fay.

How were they to help to set Hugo Tancred on his legs again, and
reconstruct something of a future for Fay? And then there always
sounded, like a knell, Fay's tired, pathetic voice: "Don't bother to
make plans for me, Jan. For the children, yes, as much as you like. You
are so clever and constructive--but leave me out, dear, for it's just a
waste of time."

And the dreadful part of it was that Jan felt a growing conviction that
Fay was right. And what was more, that Peter felt about it exactly as
Fay did, in spite of his matter-of-fact optimism at all such times as
Jan dared to express her dread.

Peter learned a good deal about the Ross family in those talks with Jan.
She was very frank about her affairs, told him what money she had and
how it was invested. That the old house in Gloucestershire was hers,
left directly to her and not to her father, by a curious freak on the
part of his aunt, one Janet Ross, who disapproved of Anthony's habit of
living up to whatever he made each year by his pictures, and saving
nothing that he earned.

"My little girls are safe, anyway," he always said. "Their mother's
money is tied up on them, though they don't get it except with my
sanction till my death. I can't touch the capital. Why, then, shouldn't
we have an occasional flutter when I have a good year, while we are all
young and can enjoy things?"

They had a great many flutters--for Anthony's pictures sold well among a
rather eclectic set. His portraits had a certain _cachet_ that gave them
a vogue. They were delicate, distinguished, and unlike other work. The
beauties without brains never succeeded in getting Anthony Ross to paint
them, bribed they never so. But the clever beauties were well satisfied,
and the clever who were not at all beautiful felt that Anthony Ross
painted their souls, so they were sa