“No, Gloria, I just couldn’t tell you,” murmured her aunt. “You see—” she hesitated, glanced up quickly, then bit an oppressed lip. “Your uncle is rather—high-minded, you know.”
“High-minded?” repeated Gloria. “Why shouldn’t he be?”
“Well, what I mean is, he and I can’t agree on—well, on everything.”
“Do you mean you have quarrelled?”
Again that painful shifting of expression. “Well, when a thing’s done and can’t be undone I don’t see the sense of making a fuss about it,” said the aunt, evasively.
The new disappointment was too much for Gloria. She had no wish to press for its details. The one solace in her misery had promised to be the companionship of her “high-minded Uncle Charley,” her father’s boyhood friend. And now that was to be denied her.
This new house with all its ornate furnishings—evidently the result of Hazel’s extravagant taste—made Gloria feel just as she had felt the day she saw Mrs. Gordon’s green plush parlor suit, bought ten days after Jim Gordon’s funeral with his insurance money.
That was it. This all represented her dear Aunt Lottie’s money. And she, Gloria, was being deprived of her share. It was too difficult to understand. She could not resist the effort to fathom the mystery, neither could she approach it without a chilling shudder.
“But dad is gone!” she kept reminding herself. “That’s the one thing that counts, and he doesn’t know.”
“Did you—how did you manage about your mail?” her aunt asked nervously.