“And did she know of this passion?”
“How could she help it? I was too young for concealment, but no words of love ever passed between us. We met frequently, in the way I speak of, and would stand on a pleasant moonlight evening, screened by the clustering vines, leaning on the light fence which separated their arbor from ours, saying little, but filled with a world of sweet thoughts that made these stolen hours the most delicious of my life. Yes, George, she must have known that I loved her, but I did not speak. How could I, with every dollar I expected to have in the hands of my mother, and she so grasping and avaricious that I could scarcely persuade her to give me enough money to purchase food, for she had fairly starved me out of her house.
“Mrs. Judson, you remember, bought the house she lived in of our father, just before he died, and did not move into it until Madame had abandoned all attempts at respectable life, taking that poor girl Catharine with her. First, she went into an inferior dwelling, then to the garret where she is to be found now.
“I refused to give up my room in the old home, and she consented that I should board with the tenant to whom it was rented. In this way it happened that I was saved the shame of her interference, and kept our domestic troubles a secret from this proud girl, and as far as possible from the world. But you will understand that the dread of this exposure would keep me silent. I dared not tell this splendid girl that I was the legal dependant and slave of a woman who did not give herself the common decencies of life, out of the great wealth my father left, and that two years must pass before I could come to her mother as an independent gentleman and ask her hand. Now I could do a thing like that, though the very idea of my mother’s life makes me shrink, but then I was inexperienced, shy, and terribly depressed by the course my mother was pursuing. The great terror of my life was that those two persons should meet.
“I loved this noble girl to distraction, and, brother George, I am sure that she loved me, though all this time she was engaged to another man.”
“Engaged to another man, and knew in her heart that you loved her?”
“Do not blame her; had I spoken out, she might have found courage to break an engagement which, I am sure, was made at the persuasion of her mother. Yet I am told that Oakley was a noble young fellow, and loved her dearly. She was not unhappy with him.”
“How do you know that, brother Louis?”
“Because she has told me so since his death.” George De Marke crushed the wide-awake in his hand, while a low whistle expressed the new light that was dawning upon him.
“Well, go on,” he said, with a gleam of humor in his eyes.