"Rather you than me!" he said. "But well you may; it is all your father's money, first or last."
Mona rose to go.
"I am glad you have told me all this," she said, "though it is rather depressing."
"Depressing? Hoot, havers! It will teach you how to treat Rachel Simpson for the future. I have a likeness of your father and mother here. Would you like to see it?"
"Very much indeed. It may be one I have never seen."
He took up a shabby old album, and turned his back while he found the place; but a page must have slipped over by accident in his shaky old hands, for when Mona looked she beheld only a vision of long white legs and flying gauzy petticoats.
"Damnation!" shouted the old man, and snatching the book away, he hastily corrected his mistake.
It was all right this time. No living faces were so familiar to Mona as were those of the earnest, capable man, and the beautiful, queenly woman in the photograph.
"I have never seen this before," she said. "It is very good."
"I'll leave it to you in my will, eh? It will be worth as much as most of my legacies."