and there, with never a place to come back to."

"I have thought of it often in the few days I have been here. I have a
home in New York, but I could not possibly afford to live in it; so I
rent it; and when I want to go fishing there's enough under hand to pay
the expenses. My poor old dad! He was always indorsing notes for his
friends, or carrying stock for them; and nothing ever came back. I am
afraid the disillusions broke his heart. And then, perhaps I was a
bitter disappointment. I was expelled from college in my junior year.
I had no head for figures other than that kind which inhabit the Louvre
and the Vatican."

Her face became momentarily mirthful.

"So I couldn't take hold of the firm for him," he continued. "And I
suppose the last straw was when I tried my hand at reporting on one of
the newspapers. He knew that the gathering of riches, so far as I was
concerned, was a closed door. But I found my level; the business was
and is the only one that ever interested me or fused my energy with
real work."

"But it is real work. You are one of those men who have done
something. Most men these days rest on their fathers' laurels."

"It's the line of the least resistance. I never knew that the Jersey
coast was so picturesque. What a sweep! Do you know, your house on
that pine-grown crest reminds me of the Villa Serbelloni, only yonder
is the sea instead of Como?"

"Como." Her eyes became dreamily half-shut. Recollection put on its