“Azalea,” she said quietly, “I truly like you. I am, indeed, happily surprised in you. I like you better as a house companion than I thought I could like any woman. For, to tell the truth, I am not a social person. If I have not looked at you in quite the old way, it is because I feel conscious of the complications that have arisen. I do not believe, Azalea, in trying to influence the life of another in the way that your grandmother has tried to influence your life. It is not right. I believe that everyone should be free in this world, so far as possible, and your grandmother has taken your freedom away from you.”
“Yes,” I said, “she has. But she meant to be wise and kind for me. I loved her, Aunt Lorena, and I always shall.”
“Are you willing to abide by the terms of her will? Are you willing to marry the man your uncle approves of—the man who will, according to your grandmother’s idea, bring credit to the family?”
She looked so intense and sympathetic that I couldn’t help laughing.
“I am willing to marry just one man,” I found courage to say. “I hope uncle will approve of him.”
“If you mean Keefe O’Connor,” she said in her high voice, “you will see that your hopes are not realized. Your uncle likes him very much personally, but your grandmother did not. Or at least, she did not approve of having him enter the Knox family. It was to keep him from doing so that she made her will as she did. She told your uncle that.”
Carin, was it very bad of me to laugh again. “Then,” I said, “I shall have to let the fortune go, Aunt Lorena.”
She lifted both of her thin white hands in warning.
“That is very easy for you to say, my dear, very easy indeed. You are young and do not know the value of money and of position and of an estate like this. It is the feeling that you do not realize these things, that made it necessary for your uncle and myself to ask Mr. O’Connor to—to absent himself—until you have had time to make up your mind. We want you to travel and to see the world. We want you to meet people and to have a chance to compare this one with that. But when we insist upon all this, it may seem to you as if we were opposing you and setting ourselves against your happiness, whereas, above everything else, we want to do what is for your best interest.”
She looked more solemn than ever.