“None. Why?”
“Because there ought to be, you know. I am afraid your family are not inventive, Miss Conyers. For this is just such a case as requires a tradition to explain it. And such a tradition could be so easily invented, to tell us what ancestress, by what crime, entailed the curse upon all her female descendants. For instance, the tale might run—How in the dark ages a certain fair nun of your race broke her vows of celibacy in favor of a certain gay knight, and in becoming his wife, by that law of retribution which visits the sins of the parents upon the children, entailed upon all her daughters to the end of time the punishment of misery in marriage. You are sure there is no such legend?”
“Quite,” said Britomarte, smiling. “And for the want of such a legend in explanation of the mystery, I was obliged to seek the solution of the problem in the inherent wickedness of men. When you hear the rest of my story you will see how I found it there.”
“I can even now see that, Britomarte.”
“You will excuse me from speaking of my grandfather and my father, though I remember both perfectly well.”
“Certainly, dearest, I understand. Whatever a man’s faults may be, it is not for his descendants to discover them to others.”
“No. But nothing shall prevent my speaking of my brother-in-law. I had one only sister—the daughter of my mother’s first marriage, for my mother was married twice. This sister was sixteen years old and I was four when our parents died and we were left to the care of a grand-aunt.”
“Miss Pole?”
“Yes; but she lived in Washington city then, and saw a great deal of company, and kept open house. My half sister was wealthy, having inherited her father’s fortune, which was secured to her; I was perfectly penniless, for my father had unfortunately run through every cent of my mother’s little property. While my sister lived single I never knew a want. But she married—married miserably, like all her foremothers had done. Her husband was the celebrated tenor, Adriano di Bercelloni. She heard him sing at an opera, fell in love with him, became mad, blind, desperate, threw herself in his way, went everywhere she could see him, and finally attracted his attention. Mona was very beautiful as well as very wealthy, and very much in love with the fascinating tenor. The bait was tempting, the opportunity good, and so the spendthrift opera singer ran away with the rich heiress.”
“Poor, infatuated girl!”