"'You!' said he. 'How can a little friendless boy like you find them? No, no, Warren, stay with me, and let me search for your mother. I may succeed, but you will starve ere you find them, or be put in prison. Warren you will stay?'"
"And you did?" said Georgia.
"And I did. I answered that what he said was true, and that he was far more likely to succeed than I was. That night I slept in a princely home, with servants to come at my call—with every luxury to charm every sense around me. Was not that a sudden change, Georgia, from the miserable quarters of the players?"
"Yes, indeed," said Georgia. "And what change did it make in you? Did affluence spoil you?"
"It might have, if I had stayed long enough there," said Warren, smiling, "for I, with all my perfections—and if you want a list of them just ask Miss Felice Leonard—am not infallible. I gave him my history, and he dispatched a trusty messenger to Burnfield, and upon his return he told me that both my mother and sister were dead. I believed him then, but I have since thought that, finding you provided for, he wished to keep me all to himself, and make me his sole heir.
"I had so long thought, Georgia, that you and my mother were dead that the revelations did not take me by surprise, and though I grieved for awhile, the novelty of everything around me kept my mind from dwelling much on my bereavement. My grandfather told me he intended to send me to school, and, when he died, make me his sole heir, on condition that I would drop the detested name of Darrell and take his. Not being very particular about the matter, I readily consented, and two months afterward I was sent to old Yale, where he himself had been educated, there to be trained in the way I should go.
"Well, Georgia, I remained there four years, and won golden opinions from the big wigs of the institution, and delighted the heart of my kind old grandfather by my progress in the arts and sciences. A letter announcing his sudden death recalled me at last. I hurried back to New York in time to follow him to the grave, and, when the will was read, I found myself sole heir to his almost princely wealth.
"Then I went to Europe and Asia, and saw all the sights, from the pyramids of Egypt down, and wrote a book about my travels, as every one does now who goes three yards from his own vine and fig-tree. Then I came home, and lo! before I have been here three months, I find that my sister, who was dead, comes to life again, and so—finis!"
"You should add, 'And they lived happy for ever after,'" said Georgia, smiling, "only, perhaps, it would not be strictly correct. And now that you have found your sister, what do you mean to do with her?"
"Make her mistress of the palatial mansion of the Randalls," said Warren, promptly, "and settle one-half my fortune on her. That, Madam Wildair, is my unchangeable intention."