Then Mrs. Temple, becoming anxious to have her boy fitted for Harvard, where his own father had been educated, and also beginning to yearn for the East, which had always been her home, entreated her husband to retire from business, rest upon the laurels he had won, cross the continent, and locate in some convenient suburb of Boston, where Philip could have the advantages which she craved for him.
At first he appeared somewhat reluctant to do this, for he had been interviewed and asked if he would accept a nomination for governor of the State; but he had become very fond of his stepson, for whom he also desired the best privileges the country afforded, and he finally yielded the point, and a few months later found the family located upon a beautiful estate in Brookline, Massachusetts, where—glowing accounts of their wealth and prestige having preceded them—they were warmly received among the élite of that aristocratic town, and also of cultured Boston.
Mrs. Temple’s first husband had been a classmate and close friend of Mr. Heatherford, of New York, and the families had always been in the habit of exchanging frequent visits previous to Mr. Wentworth’s death, and Mrs. Wentworth’s going West. But the intimacy, thus for a time interrupted, was resumed when they returned East, and located in Brookline, and then Philip and Mollie Heatherford had renewed the friendship of their early childhood, when they had played “keep house” together in a picturesque tent which Mr. Heatherford had caused to be erected beneath the shadows of two magnificent elms, that grew upon the lawn of his fine estate on the banks of the Hudson, and where they—the one thoughtlessly, the other with something of avarice and intrigue manifesting itself even then—agreed that when they should grow up they would “marry each other and really keep house together.”
Two years after the Temples located in Brookline, and when Philip was fourteen years of age, Minnie Temple came like a sunbeam into their home, and from the hour of her birth, the entire household, the servants not excepted, worshiped at her shrine.
Philip Wentworth had always been a selfish, exacting boy, but now the one redeeming trait of his nature showed itself in the tender love which he manifested for his little sister.
She was Mr. Temple’s idol, and he was in the habit of spending more hours in the nursery than in any other portion of the house. It was an oft-repeated joke of his wife’s to tell him that it was useless extravagance to keep a nurse, since he was more devoted and reliable, and achieved better results than any incumbent of the position they had ever had.
Before going in town to his business in the morning he would invariably visit the nursery to take a reluctant farewell of his darling, while his first act upon his return was to personally ascertain how she was and how she had fared during his absence.
He was extremely fond of Phil, also; was always kind to him, and lavish in everything where money was necessary, even though the young man had inherited a handsome fortune from his own father, but the sweet little girl was part and parcel of his very existence.
He had seemed like one suddenly stricken with mortal illness when he had first learned of the terrible fate that had menaced her, the day she had fallen over the cliff, at the mountains. For many hours he had seemed stripped of all strength, and his face was of the hue of death, while for days afterward he would not allow her out of his sight—scarcely out of his arms.
“What should I have done!—I could not live without her,” he had said, with pale lips and tones that quavered, like those of an old man with the intensity of his emotions.