them,
and he should prefer at present to have the fund wholly under Father
Damon's control. Some time, he intimated, he might make more lasting
provisions with trustees. It would be better for Father Damon to give
Dr. Leigh money as he saw she needed it.

The letter recited this at length; it had a check endorsed, and the
writer asked the doctor to be his almoner. He dwelt very much upon the
relief this would be to him, and the opportunity it would give her in
many emergencies, and the absolute confidence he had in her discretion,
as well as in her quick sympathy with the suffering about them. And also
it would be a great satisfaction to him to feel that he was associated
with her in such a work.

In its length, in its tone of kindliness, of personal confidence,
especially in its length, it was evident that the writing of it had been
a pleasure, if not a relief, to the sender. Ruth read it and reread it.
It was as if Father Damon were there speaking to her. She could hear
the tones of his voice. And the glance of love--that last overmastering
appeal and cry thrilled through her soul.

But in the letter there was no love; to any third person it would have
read like an ordinary friendly philanthropic request. And her reply,
accepting gratefully his trust, was almost formal, only the writer felt
that she was writing out of her heart.

XVIII

The Roman poet Martial reckons among the elements of a happy life "an
income left, not earned by toil," and also "a wife discreet, yet blythe
and bright." Felicity in the possession of these, the epigrammatist
might have added, depends upon content in the one and full appreciation
of the other.

Jack Delancy returned from Washington more discontented than when he
went. His speculation hung fire in a most tantalizing way; more than
that, it had absorbed nearly all the "income not earned by toil," which
was at the hazard of operations he could neither control nor comprehend.
And besides, this little fortune had come to seem contemptibly
inadequate. In his associations of the past year his spendthrift habits
had increased, and he had been humiliated by his inability to keep
pace with the prodigality of those with whom he was most intimate.
Miss Tavish was an heiress in her own right, who never seemed to give
a thought to the cost of anything she desired; the Hendersons, for any
whim, drew upon a reservoir of unknown capacity; and even Mavick began
to talk as if he owned a f