ghton died.
James Houghton cried, and put a black band on his Sunday silk hat.
But he was too feverishly busy at Throttle-Ha'penny, selling his
hundredweights of ash-pit fodder, as the natives called it, to
realize anything else.

He had three men and two boys working his pit, besides a
superannuated old man driving the winding engine. And in spite of
all jeering, he flourished. Shabby old coal-carts rambled up behind
the New Connection, and filled from the pit-bank. The coal improved
a little in quality: it was cheap and it was handy. James could sell
at last fifty or sixty tons a week: for the stuff was easy getting.
And now at last he was actually handling money. He saw millions
ahead.

This went on for more than a year. A year after the death of Mrs.
Houghton, Miss Frost became ill and suddenly died. Again James
Houghton cried and trembled. But it was Throttle-Ha'penny that made
him tremble. He trembled in all his limbs, at the touch of success.
He saw himself making noble provision for his only daughter.

But alas--it is wearying to repeat the same thing over and over.
First the Board of Trade began to make difficulties. Then there was
a fault in the seam. Then the roof of Throttle-Ha'penny was so loose
and soft, James could not afford timber to hold it up. In short,
when his daughter Alvina was about twenty-seven years old,
Throttle-Ha'penny closed down. There was a sale of poor machinery,
and James Houghton came home to the dark, gloomy house--to Miss
Pinnegar and Alvina.

It was a pinched, dreary house. James seemed down for the last time.
But Miss Pinnegar persuaded him to take the shop again on Friday
evening. For the rest, faded and peaked, he hurried shadowily down
to the club.

CHAPTER II

THE RISE OF ALVINA HOUGHTON

The heroine of this story is Alvina Houghton. If we leave her out of
the first chapter of her own story it is because, during the first
twenty-five years of her life, she really was left out of count, or
so overshadowed as to be negligible. She and her mother were the
phantom passengers in the ship of James Houghton's fortunes.

In Manchester House, every voice lowered its tone. And so from the
first Alvina spoke with a quiet, refined, almost convent voice. She
was a thin child with delicate limbs and face, and wide, grey-blue,
ironic eyes. Even as a small girl she had that odd ironic tilt of
the eyelids which gave her a look as if she were hanging back in
mockery. If she