"You have taken counsel, then?"
The parasol dug a great hole in the soft pines and was in danger of being broken, as Tom replied:
"Oh, yes, we are sure of that. Whatever Uncle Arthur has, and it is more than a million, will go to father, and, after him, to Maude and me; so you are sure to be rich and to be the mistress of Tracy Park, which will naturally come to me. Think, Jerrie, what a different life you will lead at the Park House from what you do now, washing old Mrs. Crawford's stockings and Harold's overalls."
"Yes, I am thinking," Jerrie answered, very low; and if Tom had followed the end of her parasol, he would have seen that it was forming the word Gretchen in front of him.
"Suppose Mr. Arthur has a wife somewhere?" Jerrie asked.
"A wife!" Tom exclaimed. "That is impossible. We should have heard of that."
"Who was Gretchen?" was the next query.
"Oh, some sweetheart, I suppose—some little German girl with whom he amused himself awhile and then cast off, as men usually do such incumbrances."
Tom did not quite know himself what he was saying, or what it implied, and he was not at all prepared to see the parasol stuck straight into the ground, while Jerrie sprang to her feet and confronted him fiercely.
"Tom Tracy! If you mean to insinuate a thing which is not good and pure against Gretchen, I'll never speak to you as long as I live! Take back what you said about Mr. Arthur's casting her off! She was his wife and you know it! Dead, perhaps—I think she is; but she was his wife—his true and lawful wife; and—I—sometimes"—