Besides, we have been separated for so
many years! But I soon will understand you. I know that
while you keep yourself apart from all the world you open
your heart to me."
"Wrap the rug about my feet, George," she said
hastily, and then sent him away upon an errand, looking
after him uneasily.
It was very pleasant to hear her boy thus formally sum up
his opinion of her. But when he found that it was based
upon a lie?
For Frances, candid enough to the world, had deceived her
son ever since he was born.
George had always believed that she had inherited a
fortune from his father. It gave solidity and comfort to
his life to think of her in the stately old mansion on
the shores of Delaware Bay, with nothing to do except to
be beautiful and gracious, as befitted a well-born woman.
It pleased him, in a lofty, generous way, that his father
(whom she had taught him to reverence as the most
chivalric of gentlemen) had left him wholly dependent
upon her. It was a legal fiction, of course. He was the
heir--the crown prince. He had always been liberally
supplied with money at school and at Harvard. Her income
was large. No doubt the dear soul mismanaged the estates
fearfully, but now he would have leisure to take care of
them.
Now, the fact was that Colonel Waldeaux had been a
drunken spendthrift who had left nothing. The house and
farm always had belonged to his wife. She had supported
George by her own work all of his life.
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