“He was my father,” Fanny said defiantly.
“Your father! Great Scott, why didn’t you say so?” Roy exclaimed.
“You needn’t swear if he was my father,” Fanny answered, beginning to cry.
The second cushion had followed the first to the floor by this time and Roy had his arm around Fanny, to whom he said, “Don’t cry. Great Scott isn’t a swear. I only said it because I must say something. What of Mark Hilton?”
“He was clerk at the Prospect House, and none the worse for that. The Vanderbilts and Astors and a lot more people did not have as good a beginning,” Fanny said, and Roy replied, “Of course not. Very few of us can boast of high-toned beginnings. My great-grandfather was a carpenter.”
“Pho!” Fanny said, with a laugh which had not much mirth in it. “I can beat that on a grandmother when I get to her. I don’t think a carpenter at all bad.”
“Neither do I,” Roy said, “and I don’t care if your father was a tinker. Tell me about him.”
“You see, it was this way,” Fanny began. “My mother was at the hotel the same summer with your father and mother. Mr. Hilton was very handsome and very tall and very nice. I know he was nice,” and she emphasized her words with sundry nods of her head as a warning that she was not to be disputed.
“Of course he was nice, or he couldn’t have been your father,” Roy said, and Fanny continued, “Mother, you know, is very handsome now. She was beautiful then,—a belle and an heiress and a great catch. She’d had I don’t know how many offers, fifty maybe, and she has a book with all their names in it. I tried to have her show it to me once and she wouldn’t. She keeps it to remind her of other days when she feels depressed. Grandma Tracy thought she ought to marry the President, or somebody like him, but she loved my father and the same as eloped with him. She came to New York in the morning on an errand. He came in the evening and they were married the next day. Grandma wouldn’t forgive them, or see my mother until after she was divorced. I think that word has a bad sound, and I am ashamed of it, but I am telling you everything just as I made mother tell me. I was ill for weeks after it, and thought everybody who looked at me was thinking about it.”
“What a foolish little girl,” Roy said, trying to pull her head down upon his shoulder. “Lots of people are divorced and nothing is thought of it. It is quite the fashion.”