"Mamma," Vesta spoke without rebuke, only with a sad, confirmed feeling of her destiny, "I could be capable of deceiving any of those gentlemen if I could so heartlessly leave my father."
"Deceiving!" Mrs. Custis remarked, filling her palm and brow with the cologne. "What is man's whole work with a woman but deceit? To court her for her money, to kiss her into taking her money out of good mortgages and putting it into bog iron ore? To tell her when past middle life that she has nothing to live upon, except the charity of the public, or her reluctant friends. All this for an experiment! The Custis family are all knaves or fools. Your father is a monster."
Vesta went to her mother's side and bathed her forehead.
"Dear mamma," she said, "let you and I do something for ourselves, while papa looks around and finds something to do. We can rent a house in Princess Anne and open a seminary. I can teach French and music, you can be the matron and do the correspondence and business, and if papa is at a loss for larger occupation he can lecture on history and science. Our friends will send their children to us, and we shall never be separated. I will give up the thought of marriage and live for you two."
Mrs. Custis made a gesture of impatience.
"And be an old maid!" she blurted. "That is insufferable. What are all these accomplishments and charms for but a husband, and what is he for but to provide bread and clothes. Don't be as crazy as your unprincipled father! Try no experiments! Drop philanthropy! Money is the foundation of all respectability."
Vesta thought to herself: "Can that be so? Does it not, then, justify the man who solicits me in his means of getting money? Mother"—Vesta spoke—"you would have me marry, then?"
"There is no would about it," answered Mrs. Custis. "You must marry!"
"Marry immediately?"
"Yes, the sooner the better, to a rich man. Have you picked out one?"