“Nannie Davenport,” she resumed, “was, as I have told you, a very beautiful girl, and her little daughter inherited all her mother’s loveliness, which was of the golden-haired, rose-and-lily type, and much of her father’s energy and love of business. Jabez Mapleson, whose mother was a sister of Annie Dale’s father, supported them after Henry Dale’s death until the girl was fifteen years of age, when she insisted that she and her mother were able to take care of themselves, and they opened a small private school, to which some of the wealthiest families of the section where they lived sent their children. In this way the mother and daughter managed to get a comfortable and independent living. But this proud spirit on their part offended old Jabez Mapleson, who never left them anything at his death, but made that queer will, which you, of course, know all about.” “Yes,” Everet returned, with a slight smile. “It was the most absurd and arbitrary affair that I ever heard of,” Miss Southern asserted, indignantly, “to divide his great fortune between those two young people—one the son of a sister, the other a daughter of a brother—giving them a taste of the luxuries and pleasures of life for several years, and then dooming them to poverty again if they refused to marry each other at the end of a given time. It all turned out well enough, though, as it happened, only I always thought it a little queer that your father and mother fought shy of each other until almost the last moment, when they concluded to comply with the terms of the will. They were wonderfully suited to each other; there was no question about that; and they made a handsome, noble couple; but I’ve always wondered if there was really any true love between them, or whether they had become so accustomed to the life of luxury they were living that they could not give it up, and so married to secure the fortune.” This last seemed to have been uttered in an absent way, as if the old lady were simply musing upon what had always been a mysterious question with her. Everet colored resentfully at the implied reflection upon the love of his parents for each other; but he saw that she had spoken thoughtlessly, as if hardly aware of his presence, and, respecting the infirmities of age, he concealed his feelings, although he hastened to set her right upon the matter. “My mother once told me,” he said, a trifle coldly, “that her married life has been a very happy one, and that there was no one else whom she would have preferred to marry at the time she was united to my father. There was something rather mysterious about the disposal of Robert Dale’s fortune, was there not?” Everet asked, anxious to change the rather delicate subject, and determined to find out all that he could about the Dale family.