He had told her that he was the last of his name and race, and after his death it was found that he had made a will, leaving her his whole fortune.
She was rich now, and she had a proud title. How strange it was that the sewing girl should attain to such luck! said the working girls by whose side she had toiled through her girlish days; but they did not envy her. They rejoiced at her good fortune, declaring that she had always been a good girl and deserved to be rich and great.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE AUTHOR’S BRIDE.
Fair had scarcely been widowed a week before a great financial crash swept away every dollar of Bayard Lorraine’s fortune.
He did not pretend to take it calmly. He grieved most bitterly over his loss.
“I must depend now on my pen for my daily bread,” he said.
And the next day he came to the Fifth Avenue mansion to bid her and Mrs. Howard a hasty good-by, saying that he was going South to collect materials for a novel.
Fair was so dazed by the suddenness of it all that she could scarcely speak. To lose him like this, when she had, as it were, just found him again, seemed most cruel. She went away by herself, to weep bitterly for her lost lover.
He had been gone more than six months when, in one of Mrs. Howard’s letters, there came some news that made his heart throb wildly.
“I do not know what you will think of Fair,” said the letter. “She has actually given away every dollar of Prince Gonzaga’s money, and reduced herself to poverty. First, there was her old friend, Sadie Osborne, whose husband has been out of work so long with his broken arms—she got five thousand dollars. Then there was some woman named Burns that showed her a little kindness after her mother died, and she got five thousand dollars. An old policeman who gave her a kind word and a packet of car tickets once when she was escaping from her husband, received the same amount of money. In short, everybody who ever treated her kindly received a reward. That beautiful Florentine villa she presented to me by deed of gift, and I am going back there next winter. The rest of the money—over a hundred thousand dollars—she has given to found a home for orphan Italians in this city, as Gonzaga was an Italian, and she thought his countrymen ought to have the money. It will be called the Prince Gonzaga Home. I did not approve of it, I can tell you, but she was her own mistress, having come of age several months ago, and she would not listen to my advice, but says coolly that she knows I will give her a bite and a sup as long as I live, and that then she can go to work again.”