“That is,” he went on, “he used to be able to stop before doing himself injury. He didn’t care what happened to others. But he can’t now. The gambler’s mania has got hold of him in just the same way that he’s lost control of his temper, and he’s likely, if he keeps on, to gamble away everything he’s got. He liked Mark Fenlow and led him into more evil than just the gambling. But it was that that proved the boy’s ruin. It was the old story—playing, losing, borrowing, financial difficulties, the temptation of money in sight, the belief that he could pay it back the next day. His last filchings, which brought about discovery and confession of the whole business to his mother and father, were due to the fact that Felix was ruthlessly pressing him to pay back some borrowed money. That was why Mrs. Fenlow went up to Felix’s office and told him what she thought of him. Weeks ago I went to the boy and tried to reason with him about the way he was going and persuade him to quit, short off. He told his mother about that, too, and that was how she happened to mention my name in their controversy.”
“Poor Mrs. Fenlow!” said Henrietta. “I knew she must be in some great trouble that morning. But what has become of Mark?”
“His father made good his peculations and hushed the matter all up, and then they sent him out west to a cattle ranch.”
CHAPTER XVIII
Isabella Takes One More Ride
Henrietta Marne looked curiously at the envelope bearing the stamp of Hugh Gordon’s business firm. “There is always a letter from Mr. Gordon just before Mr. Brand gets back,” she said to herself, “so I suppose he’ll be here some time today. If he does I’ll have to decide about leaving him. But there’ll be such a lot of work to do it won’t be fair for me to say anything about going till we get things straightened out again.”
On that same June morning Penelope Brand was reading a letter in a similar envelope. She was out of doors, in her wheel-chair, in the shade of that same tree from which she had fallen, years before, to such pitiful maiming of her body and her life. Beside her was a little table holding some books, a pad of paper and a pencil and her work-basket. For here she spent the greater part of every fine day, by turns reading, making notes, writing, sewing, and talking with her mother. The roses that grew along the fence were in bloom and a few steps in the other direction was the little vegetable garden where her mother worked when the sun was not too hot, so near that they could speak to each other now and then.
Penelope was beginning to find a new pleasure in life, the deepest of all pleasures to the woman-heart, the pleasure of service. For Hugh Gordon had been sending her books treating of the sociological questions in which she had long taken an intellectual interest and had asked her to make digests of them for him, to tell him what she thought of them and to write him at length upon such of their contents as seemed to her of particular consequence. She had had a number of letters from him discussing these things and outlining plans upon which he wanted her opinion.