"
"Pray do not make rash promises. I only claim obedience to my wishes
until you are of age. I will accept your word until that date, and shall
not go in search of you along the Mill Road, or any other disreputable
portion of the town again. Your mother's daughter can be trusted."
I tried to withdraw my hand, in order to escape with my tear-stained face
to my own room, quite forgetting the parcel I had come down the stairway
for.
"We start for New York this afternoon. Mrs. Flaxman accompanies us. She
will be congenial society for you, having been a widow for nearly a score
of years."
"I do not care particularly for widows. It is the poor and desolate I
pity."
"Well, here is the first instalment of widows' money. I give it to you
quarterly, purely from benevolent motives."
"Why so?" I asked, curiously.
"If you received it all at once Mill Road would be resplendent with crape
and cheap jewelry."
"I suppose I must thank you," I said, hotly; "but the manner of the
giving takes away all the grace of the gift."
"You express yourself a trifle obscurely, but I think I comprehend your
meaning," he said, without change of voice. If I could have seen his eyes
flash, or his imperturbable calm disturbed, my own anger would have been
less keen.
"May I go now?" I presently asked, quite subdued; for he had fallen into
a brown study, and was still holding my hand.
"Yes, I had forgotten," he said, turning away, and a moment after entered
the library and shut the door.
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