“It was the most absurd and arbitrary affair that I ever heard of,” Miss Southern asserted, indignantly, “to divide his great fortune between those two young people—one the son of a sister, the other a daughter of a brother—giving them a taste of the luxuries and pleasures of life for several years, and then dooming them to poverty again if they refused to marry each other at the end of a given time. It all turned out well enough, though, as it happened, only I always thought it a little queer that your father and mother fought shy of each other until almost the last moment, when they concluded to comply with the terms of the will. They were wonderfully suited to each other; there was no question about that; and they made a handsome, noble couple; but I’ve always wondered if there was really any true love between them, or whether they had become so accustomed to the life of luxury they were living that they could not give it up, and so married to secure the fortune.”
This last seemed to have been uttered in an absent way, as if the old lady were simply musing upon what had always been a mysterious question with her.
Everet colored resentfully at the implied reflection upon the love of his parents for each other; but he saw that she had spoken thoughtlessly, as if hardly aware of his presence, and, respecting the infirmities of age, he concealed his feelings, although he hastened to set her right upon the matter.
“My mother once told me,” he said, a trifle coldly, “that her married life has been a very happy one, and that there was no one else whom she would have preferred to marry at the time she was united to my father. There was something rather mysterious about the disposal of Robert Dale’s fortune, was there not?” Everet asked, anxious to change the rather delicate subject, and determined to find out all that he could about the Dale family.
“You are right,” replied the old lady; “and it is a matter that has never been cleared up to this day, and is never likely to be, according to my way of thinking. He died very suddenly, and that may perhaps account for it, for I believe the old miser hid his money, and it has been rusting itself away all these years and doing nobody any good. He gave quite a sum to some charitable association, I’ve been told; but that could not have been a tithe of his possessions, for, the way he lived, his income must have accumulated very rapidly.”
Everet Mapleson looked interested at this view of the mystery. He had never thought of such an explanation.
“I say it is a shame!” the old lady continued, excitedly, “that his brother’s widow and child could not have had the benefit of some of his money. Charity begins at home, and he had no business to give even a blind asylum his thousands and hide away the rest, while they were toiling early and late for the bare necessities of life.”
Everet thought of the richly and daintily furnished rooms that he had visited only the previous day, and came to the conclusion that perhaps Miss Southern did not know just how they had lived.
“Did they own the cottage where they resided?” he asked.
“Bless you, no! Old Jabez Mapleson owned that; didn’t you know it? And it fell to your father, with the rest of the estate, after he died.”