There were many reasons, some of them political, why she couldn't explain who this Frenchman was--and besides I think she was so happy and so busy that she never minded what people thought. She was a little careless about explaining things until it was too late--for she died and left a daughter, Josepha, who never knew that her mother had been really and truly married to her father and who was bitter and unhappy because there was a deal of gossip about her. This Josepha was not asked about whom she wanted to marry. She was just taken to France and married to a man whom she never learned to love and sometimes people taunted her so that after he died she took just one of his names and came back to America with her daughter Louisa and built this house in Montrose Place. She did not think it was time for Louisa to marry. She meant to arrange things carefully when it was--but Louisa was like the rest of us--she fell in love when she was still very young and she ran away with her man--(that was Grandy) and she promised him that she'd always like to be poor with him. She would have, of course, only after her mother died she learned there was a great deal of money that belonged to us and when she knew that I was coming she wanted things for me. So she made a silly mistake. She kept everything a secret from Grandy; she used to go to the lawyer's when he didn't know about it and then some one told Grandy about her going and Grandy misunderstood--he thought she loved her lawyer. So they quarreled and quarreled, for Louisa was furious because he mistrusted her and in the end she was so angry that she sailed away for France with her lawyer. She couldn't make Grandy believe that it was true that she really had business in Paris; he thought it was only an excuse of the lawyer's to take her away. So Grandy went away to war and Louisa stayed in France and that's where I was born and that's where I lived until Louisa died and the Major came for me. Sometime I hope that Grandy will take you to France and let you live a little while at least in that house. I loved it so--sometimes I think I loved it even more than I loved the House in the Woods or this house. It was in this house that your father learned to love me--it was in this house here that I waited a long time hoping that the Major would let us marry. You see Louisa, my mother, did leave me these houses and a great deal of money, some of it in France, and Grandy thought your father wanted to get it, so in the end, after we had all been unhappy and wasted many precious years I did like the rest of them--I ran away. You must not blame Grandy too much. I know that Louisa and her mother Josepha were as much to blame as he. Felix and I were not patient. We all of us made many, many mistakes. They look so silly now that we are older but they seemed so necessary when they happened.