“Then you must know, as we drove up to the house up came a common sort of a fellow on horseback; and the first thing he did was to joke Reg for riding with me, when he was suspended for a flirtation, at least, with a common sort of a girl who lived in the academy town. I was as mad as a lunatic at that; for though I understood nothing about such sort of talk, I loathed the least breath of it as badly as Reg hated lying. And while I was in a frenzy of wrath, and tearing away at both of the impossible rowdy boys, up came old Grove, driving in from somewhere with ‘friends’ to whom he was going to sell the so-called Grove place. The sight of me there made him mad anyway, for a reason that I can now understand; and in a minute the other young boor had let out all about our foolish work at the minister’s house; and, too, Reg’s affair with the other girl; all this—imagine it—was blazed out before those four men; mixing me, Reginald’s good straight maiden wife, up with things which I simply felt sure were very detestable. “Well, I went to my old nurse’s room (she had always staid there in the family for my sake), and I got from her papers which auntie had gotten from old Grove before she died, and had made nurse keep privately for me, though he had hunted for them everywhere. For you must know that they were legal documents which showed that the estate we lived on and every cent of money on which he had been speculating was my money, which he, as one guardian, held in trust for me, and was bound to invest for me. So the more successfully he turned it over, the richer I was growing. Well, you see? But the point with me was, I knew the possession of this paper gave me a jack-wrench to put on old Grove, whenever I got ready. But I loved Reg then in a way, and could not disgrace his father without disgracing him. And I didn’t see how I could go to my other guardian without letting him know how bad old Grove was. My nurse had talked a good deal to me about it, and I had made up my mind the week before, romantically, that I would marry Reg and turn my property all over to him, and save his feelings, and keep him as rich as he thought himself to be, and give him a surprise the day after we should be married, by telling him all about it.