her hair, had the trite prettiness of an angel on a Christmas card; and beside her ethereal loveliness there was something gnome-like in the dark sturdiness of Archibald, who slept on his side, with his fists pressed tightly under the pillow, and the frown produced by near-sightedness still wrinkling his forehead.  Though he was not beautiful, he showed already the promise of character in his face, and his personality, which was remarkably developed for a child of his age, possessed a singular charm.  He was the kind of child people describe as “unlike other children.”  His temperament was made up of surprises, and this quality of unexpectedness inspired in his mother a devotion that was almost tragic in its intensity.  Never had she loved the normal Frances Evelyn as she loved Archibald.

As she looked down on them, sleeping so peacefully in the green light, a wave of sadness swept over her, and she thought of them suddenly as fatherless, impoverished, and unprotected, dependent on her untried labour for their lives and their happiness.  Then, before the anxiety could take possession of her mind, she put it from her, and whispered, “Courage!” as she turned away and went out of the room.

CHAPTER III

WORK

They had planned the future so carefully that there was a pitiless irony in the next turn of the screw—­for when they tried to awaken Archibald Fowler in the morning, he did not stir, and they realized presently, with the rebellious shock such tragedies always bring, that he had died in the night—­that all that he had stood for, the more than thirty years of work and struggle, had collapsed in an hour.  When the first grief, the first excitement, was over, and life began to flow quietly again in its familiar currents, it was discovered that the crash of his fortune had occurred on the day of his son’s flight and disgrace, and that the two shocks, coming together, had killed him.  While they sat in the darkened house, surrounded by the funereal smell of crape, the practical details of living seemed to matter so little that they scarcely gave them a thought.  Not until weeks afterwards, when Patty and Billy had sailed for France, and Mrs. Fowler, shrouded in widow’s weeds, had gone South to her old home, did Gabriella find strength to tear aside the veil of mourning and confront the sordid actuality.  Then she found that the crash had buried everything under the ruins of Archibald Fowler’s prosperity—­that nothing remained except a bare pittance which would insure his widow only a scant living on the impoverished family acres.  For the rest there was nothing, and she herself was as poor as she had been in Hill Street before her marriage.