“You think me frivolous,” she cried. “Well, so I am, at times. But _you_ make me think; and if this sudden accession to fortune fills me with excitement and delight, the sight of you sitting here, and the nearness of my mother’s tomb, gives me some sober thoughts too, and—and—Dr. Izard, will you tell me one thing? Why do people stare when they hear the exact amount of the money left me? It is not because it is so large; for some say it is anything but a large fortune. Is it—” she hesitated a little, probably because it was always hard to talk to Dr. Izard—“for the reason that it is so near the sum my father was said to have carried away with him, when he left me so suddenly?” The wind was fluttering the vines, and the doctor turned his head to look that way. When he glanced back he answered quietly, but with no irritation in his voice: “It is hard to tell what causes the stare of ignorant people. What was the amount which has been left you? I do not think you have mentioned the exact figure.” “Twenty thousand dollars,” she whispered. “Isn’t it splendid,—a lordly fortune, for such a poor girl as I am?” “Yes,” he acquiesced, “yes.” But he seemed struck just as others had been who heard it. “And was not that just what was paid papa by the French government just before mamma died?” “I have heard it so said,” was the short reply. “And don’t you know?” she asked. The pout on her lips bespoke the spoiled child, but her little hands were trembling, and he seemed to see only that. “Polly,”—he spoke harshly, for he did not like young girls, or women at all for that matter,—“I knew many things which I have let slip from my memory. When your father and I were young we were more or less intimate, being both of us students and ambitious of doing something worth while in this world. But after his disappearance and the unfortunate surmises to which it gave rise, I made a business of forgetting any confidential communications with which he may have entrusted me, and I advise you not to stir up old griefs by driving me to recall them now.” “But you were my mother’s physician and saw my father just before he went away.” “Yes.” “And did he have twenty thousand dollars in money? They say so, but it seems incredible to me, who only remember my father as looking worried and poor.” “Twenty thousand dollars was paid him two weeks before your mother died.”