"He wanted her fortune! He doesn't care a sixpence for her. It was to get the business in his hands, and now we can all tramp as soon as we please."
"Mother, you are unjust."
"And you are a poor, spiritless fool, who can never see anything beyond the page of a novel!" is the stinging retort.
She goes to her own room, and the morning's mail carries the news to Eugene and Laura.
Floyd has letters to write this evening, and when Cecil's bedtime comes, Violet goes up with her. They have a pretty romp that quite scandalizes Jane, who is not at all sure how much respect she owes this new mistress.
"O you sweet little darling!" Violet cries for the twentieth time. "You are the one thing I can have for mine."
"I am papa's first," says Cecil, with great dignity. "He loves me best of anything in the wide world,—he has told me so, oh, a hundred times! And I love him best, and then you. Oh, what makes you cry so often, because your papa is dead?"
No one but poor old Denise will ever love her "best of all." She has had her day of being first. Even in heaven papa has found the one he so long lost and is happy. She can never be first with him again. He hardly misses her, Violet; he has had her only at such long intervals, such brief whiles.
In the silence she cries herself to sleep the first night in her new home.