“I always knew she meant to do it, and that was one reason why I sent you away. I wouldn’t have your money and I felt if you knew you wouldn’t ask me for fear I’d think—Oh, money you don’t earn or inherit squarely is such a grief,” Leigh paused.
“So you wouldn’t let me have any hope because of this junk in Ohio that you were afraid you’d get and I’d seem to be wanting if I married you, and you thought I ought to have and you’d seem to be marrying me to get. If I ever have an estate, I’ll leave it to foreign missions. I’d like to make trouble for the cuss that got me at the Rio Grande. Money might do it,” Thaine declared.
Leigh did not laugh.
“You are right, Thaine. I was so unhappy about it all. For since I first came to Uncle Jim’s, I knew I ought not have Miss Jane’s love and the farm that you would have had if she knew you.”
“You’ve known this all these years and never told even me. You silent little subsoiler!” Thaine exclaimed.
“It grew in my mind from an almost babyhood impression to a woman’s principle,” Leigh declared. “I never 400 thought of telling anybody. But there was another thing that kept me firm that day on the Purple Notches. Years ago, when I was a baby girl, I remember dimly seeing two men in an awful fight one night just at dusk down on the railroad track by Clover Creek in Ohio. I thought one of them was my father. Miss Jane would never tell me anything about it, and made me promise never to speak of it. So I grew up sure that my father had committed some dreadful crime, and, Thaine, until I knew better, I couldn’t take the risk of disgracing your name, the proud name of Aydelot.”
“Oh, Leigh, it is no matter what our forefathers do—they were all a bad lot if we go back far enough. It’s what we do that counts. It’s what I do as Thaine Aydelot, not as Asher Aydelot’s son, that I must stand or fall by. It’s how far we win our wilderness, little girl, not the wilderness our fathers won or lost.”
Thaine was sitting beside Leigh now, under the perfumy white honeysuckle blossoms.
“But, Thaine, the bans are all lifted now.”
Leigh sat with face aglow. “Your grandfather wouldn’t let his property go to a child of Virginia Aydelot, so Miss Jane couldn’t give it to you. She left it to me—all her property, provided, or hoping, I would—you should—”she hesitated.