At the house in East Fifty-seventh Street, from which she would be moving the next day, she found Judge Crowborough awaiting her in the dismantled drawing-room, where packing-cases of furniture and pictures lay scattered about in confusion.  In the dreadful days after Archibald Fowler’s death, the judge had been very kind, and she had turned to him instinctively as the one man in New York who was both able and willing to be of use to her.  Though he had never attracted her, she had been obliged to admit that he possessed a power superior to superficial attractions.

“I dropped in to ask what I might do for you now?” he remarked with the dignity of one who possesses an income of half a million dollars a year.  “It’s a pity you have to leave this house.  I remember when Archibald bought it—­somewhere back in the ’seventies—­but I suppose there’s no help for it, is there?”

“No, there’s no help.”  She sat down on a packing-case, and he stood gazing benevolently down on her with his big, soft hands clasped on the head of his walking-stick and his overcoat on his arm.  “I’ve rented three rooms in one of the apartments of the old Carolina over on the West Side near Columbus Avenue.  The rest of the apartment is rented to art students, I believe, and we must all use the same kitchen and the same bath-tub,” she added with a laugh.  “Of course it isn’t luxury, but we shan’t mind very much as soon as we get used to it.  I couldn’t be much poorer than I was before my marriage.”

“But the children?  You’ve got to have the children looked after.”

“I’ve been so fortunate about that,” her voice was quite cheerful again.  “There’s a seamstress from my old home—­Miss Polly Hatch—­who has known me all my life, and she is coming to sleep in a little bed in my room until we can afford to rent an extra bedroom.  As long as she has to work at home anyhow, she can very easily look after the children while I am away.  They are good children, and as soon as they are big enough I’ll have to send them to school—­to the public school, I’m afraid.”  This, because of Fanny’s violent opposition, was a delicate point with her.  She felt that she should like to start the children at a private school, but it was clearly impossible.

“The boy won’t be big enough for a year or two, will he?” He was interested, she saw, and this unaffected interest in her small affairs moved her almost to tears.

“I wanted him to go to kindergarten, but, of course, I cannot afford it.  He is only four and a half, and I’m teaching him myself in the evenings.  Already he can read very well in the first reader,” she finished proudly.

For a minute the judge stared moodily down on her.  His sagging cheeks took a pale purplish flush, and he bit his lower lip with his large yellow teeth, which reminded Gabriella of the tusks of a beast of prey.  Then he laid his overcoat and his stick carefully down on a packing-case, and held out his hand.