All day he was "down town"; and in winter it was long after nightfall when she heard his fagged step on the stairs and his hand on the school-room door.

He would kiss her in silence, and ask one or two questions of the nurse or the governess; then Mrs.Bart's maid would come to remind him that he was dining out, and he would hurry away with a nod to Lily.

In summer, when he joined them for a Sunday at Newport or Southampton, he was even more effaced and silent than in winter.

It seemed to tire him to rest, and he would sit for hours staring at the sea-line from a quiet corner of the verandah, while the clatter of his wife's existence went on unheeded a few feet off.
Generally, however, Mrs.Bart and Lily went to Europe for the summer, and before the steamer was half way over Mr.Bart had dipped below the horizon.

Sometimes his daughter heard him denounced for having neglected to forward Mrs.Bart's remittances; but for the most part he was never mentioned or thought of till his patient stooping figure presented itself on the New York dock as a buffer between the magnitude of his wife's luggage and the restrictions of the American custom-house.
In this desultory yet agitated fashion life went on through Lily's teens: a zig-zag broken course down which the family craft glided on a rapid current of amusement, tugged at by the underflow of a perpetual need--the need of more money.