“Oh, mother dear, I went down to meet you, and I missed you by just five minutes,” said Fanny, kissing her cheek.  “I wanted you to go with me to look at the house in London Terrace.  Miss Polly and I are crazy about it.”

“I know,” said Gabriella tenderly, while she feasted her eyes on her daughter.

The old apartment house in which they had spent the last ten years would be torn down in the summer, and Fanny and Miss Folly had devoted the past week to an exhaustive hunt for a home.

“Then you’ll look at it to-morrow, won’t you, mother?” urged Fanny.  “We can get the upper rooms and they are larger than these.  There is a little yard in front, with an elm tree and a rose-bush, and plenty of space for flowers.”

“I can’t recall the house exactly,” said Gabriella thoughtfully.  “It must be in a row, isn’t it?  I have a vague recollection of some old houses, with fronts of stuccoed pilasters, and rather nice yards.  But West Twenty-third Street is too far away, dear.  I don’t like the neighbourhood.  Wouldn’t you rather be in Park Avenue?” Her ignorance of New York, though she had lived there seventeen years, amazed Fanny, who was a true child of the city.

“Carlie Herndon lives in that row, mother”—­Carlie Herndon, the daughter of a distinguished and unpopular novelist, was Fanny’s best friend for the moment—­“and I could always go out with her in the evening.”

“It isn’t the location I should have liked, Fanny,” said Gabriella, weakly yielding, as she always yielded to her daughter; “but if you really fancy the house, I’ll try to look at it on my way home to-morrow.  One has to be very careful about the plumbing in these old houses.  I insist upon good plumbing.  After that, you may have what you want.”

“Oh, it has brand new bathrooms, Mrs. Mallon told me so, and she’s lived there until a year ago.  And if you had only seen the new apartments we looked at, mother, nothing on the East Side that would have held us under twenty-five hundred a year, and even at that the bedrooms were no bigger than closets, and you’d have to have electric light all day in the bathroom.  We searched everywhere, didn’t we, Miss Polly?”

“West Twenty-third Street is mighty far out of the way, honey,” observed Miss Polly cautiously.

“Oh, but I’d have Carlie, and she’s my best friend,” persisted Fanny, with caressing obstinacy.

“Well, we’ll see, precious,” said Gabriella, while she assured herself that if Fanny cost her every penny she had, at least the child was worth what she spent on her.  To a superficial observer, Fanny would probably have appeared merely an attractive girl, of Jane’s willowy type, with something of Jane’s trite prettiness of feature; but to Gabriella, who suffered from a maternal obliquity of vision, she seemed both brilliant and beautiful.  Of course she was selfish, but this selfishness, as long as it was clothed in her youth and loveliness,