"No," said Alora. "Father isn't the man to be crushed by anything. He's shrewd enough, in his bourgeois way. Once, long ago—back in New York—a woman made him give her money; it was money, you know; and I have often thought he ran away from America to escape her further demands."
"Who was the woman?"
"My mother's nurse."
"Oh. Was it her wages she demanded?"
"Perhaps so. I may have misjudged father in that case. But it seemed to me—I was a mere child then—that it must have been a larger sum than wages would have amounted to. Yet, perhaps not. Anyhow, he left America right afterward, and when we had wandered a year or so in various countries we settled down here."
"Won't he have to account for all the money he has spent and given away, when you come of age?" inquired Mary Louise.
"No. Mother distinctly told me I was to ask for no accounting whatever. Her will says he is to handle the income as he sees fit, just as if it were his own, so long as he provides properly for his daughter and treats her with fatherly consideration. That's the only reason he keeps me with him, guarding my person but neglecting the other injunctions. If he set me adrift, as I'm sure he'd like to do, I could appeal to the court and his income would cease and another guardian be appointed. I believe there is something of that sort in the will, and that is why he is so afraid of losing me. But he gives me no chance to appeal to anyone, although I sometimes think I shall run away and leave him in the lurch. If I could get to Chicago and tell Judge Bernsted, my mother's lawyer, how I am treated, I believe he could make the court set aside my father's guardianship. But I can't get ten miles away from here, for lack of money."
"How your dear mother would grieve, if she knew her plans for your happiness have failed!" exclaimed Mary Louise.
Alora frowned, and somehow that frown reminded Mary Louise of the girl's father.
"My mother ought to have known my father better," she declared sullenly. "I must not criticize her judgment, for her memory is my most precious possession and I know she loved me devotedly. But there is one thing in her history I can never understand."