"Oh, how dreadful! How could you bear to be parted from your own dear mother for ever?"
Lynn surveyed the questioner with a slight smile.
"Oh, I enjoyed the feeling that I brought in six hundred a year. I knew that it would procure my mother more pleasure than my society could, and that, with six hundred a year, her baby boy, and an occasional kiss from the biggest blackguard the Lord ever let loose on earth, she would be as happy as she could ever be. Poor mother! she was pretty, they say, even when she lay dead; her beauty didn't do her much good, but, on the other hand, my ugliness hasn't profited me, greatly. On the whole, I wish I looked like her."
"Aunt Clara was so awfully pretty and that Italian she married was so wonderfully handsome! the boy must have been a perfect little beauty."
"He was." Lynn spoke without enthusiasm.
"Weren't you fond of him?
"Very."
"Wouldn't you like to see him, again?"
"No—yes"—
"I don't believe you cared much about him, really."