waned, and the bronze turtle, afloat on the gilded pool, became at last a shadow among the shadows.
"It has been wonderful to talk like this," Hildegarde said, as she and her father went finally up the hill. She bade him "good-night" at the library door, and turned as she ascended the stairs to wave a hand to him. He waved back, blew a kiss from the tips of his fingers. He had doffed his great cloak but still carried it over his arm. Dark and debonair, he gave her a glance from his laughing eyes which seemed to light her world. Always afterwards she was to carry in her heart the picture of her father as he stood laughing up at her.
She slept well that night. She was not afraid of poverty, and she had no doubts as to the outcome of the interview with Neale Winslow. She and Daddy would stand together. And now that Ethel was out of it. . . ! She pictured a future in which she and her father surmounted every obstacle. A sort of fairy-tale existence. Material things did not matter. One's happiness came from something higher. Half-awake, she saw a little house . . . a loveseat . . . a footstool . . . they must buy one more chair . . . for Daddy!
Carew, sitting late before the library fire, was less sanguine than his daughter. As the reaction set in against those earlier high moments, he weighed the difficulties ahead. One could not easily defy Winslow, and the results of defiance would be—the Deluge! There was, of course, Anne. What she had might help. But he was not going to drag her down in the wreck of his fortunes. He rose, got out his account books,
