“I shall,” he said, easily, “and I will write you a check now, and you can have it to settle any immediate demands upon your exchequer.  I shall be away a good deal, and I want Constance to be with you and Aunt Isabelle.  It is a favor to me, Mary, to have her here.  You mustn’t add to my obligations by making me feel too heavily in your debt.”

He smiled as he said it, and Gordon had a nice smile.  And presently Mary found herself smiling back.

“Gordon,” she said, in a half apology, “Porter calls me Contrary Mary.  Maybe I am—­but you see, Constance was my sister before she was your wife.”

He leaned back in his chair and looked at her.  “And you’ve had twenty years more of her than I—­but please God, Mary, I am going to have twenty beautiful years ahead of me to share with her—­I hope it may be three times twenty.”

His voice shook, and in that moment Mary felt nearer to him than ever before.

“Oh, Gordon,” she said, “I’m a horrid little thing.  I’ve been jealous because you took Constance away from me.  But now I’m glad you—­took her, and I hope I’ll live to dance at your—­golden wedding.”  And then, most unexpectedly, she found herself sobbing, and Gordon was patting her on the back in a big-brotherly way, and saying that he didn’t blame her a bit, and that if anybody wanted to take Constance away from him, they’d have to do it over his dead body.

Then he wrote the check, and Mary took it, and in the knowledge of his munificence, felt the relief from certain financial burdens.

Before he left her, Gordon, hesitating, referred gravely to another subject.

“And it will be better for you to have Constance here if Barry goes away.”

“Barry?” breathlessly.

“Yes.  Don’t you think he ought to go, Mary?”

“No,” she said, stubbornly; “where could he go?”

“Anywhere away from Leila.  He mustn’t marry that child.  Not yet—­not until he has proved himself a man.”

The blow hit her heavily.  Yet her sense of justice told her that he was right.

“I can’t talk about it,” she said, unsteadily; “Barry is all I have left.”

He rose.  “Poor little girl.  We must see how we can work it out.  But we’ve got to work it out.  It mustn’t drift.”

Left alone, Mary sat down at her desk and faced the future.  With Roger gone, and Barry going——­

And the Tower Rooms empty!

She shivered.  Before her stretched the darkness and storms of a long winter.  Even Constance’s coming would not make up for it.  And yet a year ago Constance had seemed everything.

She crossed the hall to the dining-room and looked out of the window.  The garden was dead.  The fountain had ceased to play.  But the little bronze boy still flung his gay defiance to wind and weather.

Pittiwitz, following her, murmured a mewing complaint.  Mary picked her up; since Roger’s going the gray cat had kept away from the emptiness of the upper rooms.