And, as Fair had expected, the gentle lady replied to his suit by telling him that her own daughter was dead, and that pretty Fair was only her adopted child.
“I will be frank with you, Bayard. She is a penniless orphan, and when I adopted her her mother had just died, and the poor girl was in destitute circumstances and very unhappy. She had been reared in poverty, and belonged to the great army of sewing girls in New York. But she is as good and pure as she is lovely, and if you really love her I do not think that these facts will make any difference with you,” she added.
But he could not help feeling a little disappointed. His face grew grave, and for a moment he could not speak.
Mrs. Howard regarded him in silence for a moment, then said, in a slight tone of scorn:
“If you are regretting Fair’s lack of fortune, Bayard, I am very sorry, but I can do nothing for her. My own fortune, all of which I received from my husband, reverts, at my death, by a clause in his will, to a distant relative.”
He was so moved that he did not take any interest in that unknown relative, but answered, with a flash of wounded pride:
“I am sorry you think me mean enough to care for mere money. I assure you, I care nothing for that, although I will own that I was a little disappointed. I have some pride of birth, and I was glad that my intended bride was of a lineage as good as my own. It was a disappointment to know that she was from an obscure family, that is all, but I shall love and cherish my beautiful bride just the same as if she were a princess. As for money—pshaw! I have more than enough, and my pen has proved a new source of revenue to me.”
She held out her hand to him impulsively.
“I am glad you take it so well, so nobly,” she said. “Of course it was a disappointment, but, then, the world is full of disappointments,” she sighed, as she thought of Azalia lying in her far-off grave across the sea. Then she added pleadingly: “You will not let Fairfax know how cruelly you were disappointed? Poor child, she is so loving, so sensitive, and she is so frightened already—I have seen it in her face—lest you should be angry.”
“Angry? No, no! Even if I had known this from the first, it would have made no difference,” Bayard Lorraine answered, and when he went back to Fair he smiled, and said: