"I wish I could feel so," she said sadly.
With her hand still in his she led the way into the great library, which seemed a region of mystifying and gloomy things, lit only by the lights of the desk lamps.
"All we can do is to wait," she said.
"Have you seen your mother?" he said at last.
She shook her head. "It is useless. I have no influence over her. Doris perhaps, or Doris' husband; she might do something for fear of what others might think of her, but she wouldn't do it for me."
"I can't understand it at all," he said, shaking his head.
"I can," she said quietly. "My mother doesn't love him. She has never loved him. She married him just as Doris and Dolly married, for money, for position."
"But even then—"
"Yes, even then," she took up with a laugh that had tears in it. "Wouldn't you think that for the sake of the family name and honor, out of just simple ordinary gratitude for what had been given her, she would part with the half, even a third of her fortune? But you do not know my mother. When she has made up her mind nothing will ever change it."
"Let us hope you are wrong."