“Oh, but Uncle Jim, I know now! It doesn’t matter! I suppose I always knew my mother had relations. I meant I never thought about them,” cried Beth, her cheek instantly rubbing against her uncle’s, as if to efface all regrets he might feel. “Your part of it is all right, Bethie; mine isn’t,” said Uncle Jim, stroking the fair hair which tickled him. “Tell me; what do you know about your mother? What has your Bristead great-aunt told you?” “Not much. I know she died when I was just born and my father died four months before that. I know she wasn’t old a bit; only twenty-three, but that is on her stone, if you count up. When my father knew he couldn’t get well he took my mother to Aunt Rebecca. I think that’s all I know. Aunt Rebecca never liked to talk about my mother. She always said she would by and by. I didn’t know whether that was because she liked her too well to talk about her, or not well enough. It would act just the same on Aunt Rebecca. Of course I wanted dreadfully to hear about her; any girl would,” Beth ended with a suggested appeal to her uncle now to supply her lack of knowledge. “Wouldn’t my knee be more comfortable than the chair arm?” asked Mr. Cortlandt. “That’s better, more cozy, too! Well, Beth, I am going to tell you about your mother. I was five years older than she was, so I ought to have been more sympathetic, have stood by her. But in justice to myself I think I may say that I did not in the least realize, as I do now, that she must have longed and hungered for a brother’s kindness in those bitter months of her widowhood; indeed I did not realize anything about her, feeling that she had chosen her own lot and that it would all come out right in the end. I was entirely occupied with my own young life just then. Nannie was a lovely little creature; she was trusting, gentle, loving, obedient, but when she fell in love with your father she never could be persuaded to give him up. Your father was a fine fellow, Beth; the Bristeads were good old stock, as you evidently have been taught, and he was all he ought to be. But he hadn’t a cent in the world, and no certainty of having much more, so your Grandfather Cortlandt forbade his tenderly cared-for little daughter to marry him. Father was afraid that Nannie would suffer. But Nannie would not give up your father. Instead she gave up her home and its luxury and married him. My father was furiously angry, angry with Nannie for disobeying him, still more angry with your father for letting her share the risks of his future, and he had not forgiven either of them when the end came, so swiftly that there was no time to heal the breach. As you say, your father had taken his young wife to his father’s home and to the care of his father’s sister when he found he could not live. Miss Bristead was too proud and too angry on her side that her nephew should have been forbidden to marry the girl he chose, to let my father know when Nannie’s husband died.