“It is the strangest union I ever heard of, and I believe it was a very dangerous thing to do.”
“Dangerous? Why?”
“You might have met some one later, whom you would have learned to love, and unhappiness must have resulted from it to all parties.”
“That was hardly probable, for we had both been much in society and had seen a great deal of the world. At all events we have been a very contented couple. Our early admiration and simple liking have ripened into a deep and lasting affection, and we have been as quietly happy as most married people, I believe.”
The young man regarded his mother curiously. It seemed very strange to him that such a beautiful woman as she was and must have been in her youth, should have missed that sweetest of all experiences—youthful loving and being loved.
She was just the person, he thought, to have inspired the most ardent passion in the heart of some strong, true-minded man; and just the woman to have loved such a man most fervently and devotedly.
He almost wondered that his father had not fallen madly in love with her at the very outset, and yet he could understand how the spirit of antagonism had been aroused in them, from the fact of not having been allowed to choose for themselves in a matter so vital to their interests and happiness.
“You say that this cousin, Robert Dale, was an old bachelor?” he asked, after a few moments of thought.
“Yes, and he was every bit as eccentric as Uncle Jabez himself.”
“Are you sure that he never married? Somehow, what you have told me has created a suspicion in my mind that this Geoffrey Dale Huntress, after all, may be in some way connected with these Dales at home.”