No one ever came up our stairs like that before. How do you do it?"
The stranger's face clouded. He had been looking at her with keen delight, and he was caught up short at her words. He put out his deformed shoe.
"This is the heavy step."
Bella's cheeks had been flushed with excitement, but the dark red that rose at Fairfax's words made her look like a little Indian.
"Oh, I didn't know!" she stammered. "I didn't know."
Her cousin comforted her cheerfully. "That's all right. I don't mind. I fell from a cherry tree when I was a little chap and I've stumped about ever since."
His aunt's gentle voice, indifferent and soft, like Gardiner's murmured—
"Oh, don't listen to her, Antony, she's a spoiled, inconsiderate little girl."
But Bella had drawn nearer the stranger. She leaned on the table close to him and lifted her face in which her eyes shone like stars. She had wounded him, and it didn't seem to her generous little heart that she could quite let it go. And under her breath she whispered—
"But there's the light step, isn't there, Cousin Antony? And the smile—the awfully light smile?"