It was a long time since his wife had given him the credit for doing more than his share at the bank with a view to promotion to be head cashier, or even a “silent partner.” Each time a vacancy occurred some one else had stepped into it; Louis Cheviot had been the last. But Mrs. Mar learned through the years that the reason her husband accepted increased tasks was that he was born to bear burdens, as the sparks to fly upward. If any extra work was “going,” so to speak, it gravitated unerringly to Nathaniel Mar. As to the question of his reward, what would be gained by giving a better position to a man who in any crisis could be depended on to do all the work of a higher office, and never ask for increased emolument? The only person who ever hinted such a thing to the Trennors had been Cousin Harriet. The Trennor Brothers’ success (which was proverbial in Valdivia) had long extended to avoidance of Cousin Harriet. Certainly Mr. Mar’s life-long ill-luck brought out more clearly the fact of his boys’ early prosperity. Not that it was enormous as yet, though quite sufficient to have enabled them to marry, had they so chosen. Mrs. Mar’s satisfaction in her sons was checkered by the fact that each of these otherwise reasonable and enterprising young men clung to his boyish infatuation for Bella Wayne, long after their boyhood had gone the way of the years. It certainly did seem as though not till one or both were cut out by her marrying some one else, would either Trenn or Harry look at any of the girls Mrs. Mar considered more desirable. Not that the boys’ mother had been able wholly to escape the general Mar devotion to the disturber of their peace, but as the seasons passed, and Bella rejected one swain after another, it became increasingly vexatious to Mrs. Mar that her sons should not realize and amend the stupidity of caring about a girl who was more and more under suspicion of being handicapped by a silly passion for a mad fool who had given up the substance for the shadow, and had met his due reward—being now these many months lost in the arctic ice. * * * * * Hildegarde’s theory that since the unhappy issue of the love affair, Bella had greater need of her friend than ever before, and Hildegarde’s own consequent inaccessibility to others was the cause of some restiveness on Cheviot’s part. His old friendliness for Bella had vanished. He spoke of her with a humorous disparagement that did him ill-service with Hildegarde. But he was grave enough sometimes. “I never get a word alone with you, nowadays,” he said one night, as he sat smoking on the steps of the porch at Hildegarde’s feet, while Bella walked about the garden with Trenn. Hildegarde made some perfunctory answer, and they sat silent for a time.