“I want to talk to you, mamma,” she said, and her manner was a caress.

“You love George very much, dear?” asked Mrs. Fowler so suddenly that Gabriella looked at her startled.

For a minute the girl could not speak.  “Oh, yes; oh, yes,” she answered presently, and choked over the words.

“We wanted so much to go to your wedding—­we were afraid you would think it strange that we stayed away, but Archibald had his attack just then, and on top of it he was terribly worried about his affairs.  We have had a very hard year, and we feel so sorry, both of us, that we can’t do more for your pleasure.  As it is, we are cutting down our expenses in every way, and I have even decided to give up my carriage the first of next year.

“I know, I know,” said Gabriella, who had never had a carriage, and to whom the giving up of one seemed the smallest imaginable sacrifice.  “We mustn’t add to your cares,” she went on after a minute.  “Wouldn’t it be better, really better, if we were to take an apartment at once instead of waiting until June?”

“Until June?” repeated Mrs. Fowler vaguely, and she added quickly:  “It is the greatest pleasure to have you here.  Since Patty went I get so terribly lonely, and I don’t think it would be at all wise for you to go to yourselves.  George has hardly anything except what his father is able to give him, you know.  The poor boy hasn’t the least head for business.”

“But we shouldn’t need much.  I am sure I could manage just with what George makes—­no matter how little it is.”

For an instant Mrs. Fowler looked at her thoughtfully.

“You could, but George couldn’t,” she answered.

“You mean he is extravagant?”

“He has never had the slightest idea of the value of money—­that is one of the things you must teach him.  He is a dear boy, but he has never made a success of anything he has undertaken, and his father thinks he is too unpractical ever to do so.  But you must try to get him to live within your means, my dear, or you will both be miserable.  Try to keep him from borrowing.”

“But he refuses to talk to me about his work.  It bores him,” said Gabriella; and her simple soul, trained to regard debt as a deeper disgrace than poverty, grew suddenly troubled.  In her childhood they had gone without food rather than borrow, she remembered.

“The matter with dear George,” pursued Mrs. Fowler—­and from the sweetness of her manner she might have been paying him a compliment—­“is that he has never been steady.  He doesn’t stick at anything long enough to make it a success.  If he were left to himself he would speculate wildly, and this is why his father is obliged to overlook all that he does in the office.  It is just here that you can be of such wonderful help to him, Gabriella, by your influence.  This is why I am telling you.”

But had she any influence over him?  In spite of his passion for her had she ever turned him by so much as a hair’s breadth from the direction of his impetuous desires?  Once only she had withstood him—­once only she had triumphed, and for that triumph she had paid by a complete surrender!  She had been too glad to yield, too fearful of bringing a cloud over the sunny blue of his eyes.