had told me the terrible story of his
faithlessness.

When I was four years old he had run away from us both with my
mother's dearest friend, and neither she, nor any of his friends, had
ever heard of him afterward. I had always felt a sort of hatred of my
unknown father, who had deserted me and so cruelly treated my mother,
and the knowledge that this man was an intimate of his turned me
faint.

But if Mr. Gordon's inflection meant anything it meant that even if he
had been my father's "other self," my mother's desertion had aroused
in him the same contempt for my father that all the rest of our little
world had felt. I felt my indefinable feeling of repulsion against
the man melt into warm approval of him. He had loved the mother I had
idolized, had resented her wrongs, and I felt my heart go out to him.

"I cannot tell you what this finding of your wife means to me,"
said Mr. Gordon, turning to Dicky. The inflection of his voice, the
movement of his hand, spelled a subtle appeal to the younger man.

"I have been a wanderer for years," the deep, rich voice went on. "I
have no family ties"--he hesitated for a moment, with a curious little
air of indecision--"no wife, no child. I am a very lonely man. I wonder
if it would be asking too much to let me come to see you once in a
while and renew the memories of my youth in this dear child?"

He turned to me with the most fascinating little air of deferential
admiration I had ever seen.

But I looked in vain for any answer to his appeal in Dicky's eyes. My
husband still retained the air of formal, puzzled courtesy with which
he had brought Mr. Gordon to our table and introduced him to us. I
could see that the mysterious stranger's appeal to be made an intimate
of our home did not meet with Dicky's approval.

I could not understand the impulse that made me turn toward the
stranger and say, earnestly: "I shall be so glad to have you come to
see us, Mr. Gordon. I want you to tell me about my mother's youth."

XXXIII

"MOTHER" GRAHAM HAS SOMETHING TO SAY

It may have been the preparation we were making for an autumn vacation
in the Catskills, or it may have been that Dicky was becoming more
the master of himself, that he did not voice to me the very real
uneasiness with which I knew he viewed Robert Gordon's attitude toward
me. But whatever may have been the cause, the fact is that during
the preparations for our trip and during the vacation itself in the
g