“Keeping it?” she repeated. “Why not? It is his. It belongs to him.”
“Caroline, I’m afraid you don’t know him, even yet. He was for going to you at once and destroying the note in your presence. He would have done it, but we persuaded him to wait and think it over for a day or two. He did think and then decided to wait a little longer, for your sake.”
“For my sake? For mine?” she passed her hand in a bewildered way across her forehead. “Mr. Sylvester, I don’t seem to understand even now. I—”
“For your sake, Caroline. Remember, at that time you were engaged to Malcolm Dunn.”
Her intent gaze wavered. She drew a long breath. “I see,” she said, slowly. “Oh.... I see.”
“Yes. Captain Warren is one of the best judges of character I ever met. The Dunns did not deceive him for one moment. He was certain Malcolm intended marrying you because of your money; for that matter, so was I. But his was the plan entirely which showed them to you as they were. He knew you were too honest and straightforward to believe such things of the man to whom you were engaged if they were told you; you must see the proof with your own eyes. And he showed it to you.”
“But then,” she begged, distractedly, “why couldn’t he tell me after that? I—I am so stupid, I suppose—but, Mr. Sylvester, all this is—is—”
“He might have told you then, but he did not think it best. Caroline, your uncle has always believed in you. Even when you sent him from your home he did not blame you; he said you were deceived, that was all. But, too, he has always declared that you had been, as he expressed it, ‘brought up wrong.’ Your money had, in a way, warped your estimate of people and things. He believed that, if you were given the opportunity, you would learn that wealth does not, of itself, mean happiness. So he decided not to tell you, not to give you back your share of your father’s money—he refuses to consider it his—until another year, until you were of age, at least. And there was Steve. You know, Caroline, that money and what it brought was spoiling Steve. He has never been so much a man as during the past year, when he thought himself poor. But your uncle has planned for him as well as for you and, when he believes the time has come, he—”
“Please,” she interrupted, falteringly; “please don’t say any more. Let me think. Oh, please let me think, Mr. Sylvester.... You say that Uncle Elisha intends giving us all that father took from him? All of it?”
“Yes, all. He considers himself merely your guardian still and will accept only his expenses from the estate.”