Judith perhaps understood Edward better than any one else did; certainly, in their twelve years of married life, his wife had not fathomed him. If his charm had won him conquests, they had never obtruded. If he had craved youth and beauty, he had given no intimation of it. He had unwaveringly upheld both his wife's dignity and his by an unswerving courtesy; how much or how little love he had given her was a secret she had carried with her--she had left him her fortune, unconditionally. He had led Ann up to the very present, and she told him what he already knew: "And my father came home to-day." She paused on that, because of the tragedy it had been to her, but her face was more expressive than she knew. "I suppose he will sell the farm and take you all west with him when he goes back? That will mean a different life for you," Edward said. The suggestion was an entirely new one to Ann; she grew wide-eyed over it. Then she shook her head decidedly. "No, he won't do that--he loves the place." "Then he will probably send you to school in the autumn." This also was a new idea, but after consideration she dismissed it. "No.... I didn't study very well when Aunt Sue sent me to school," she added with a touch of shame. "You didn't?" Edward was genuinely surprised; it was not his reading of her. "I couldn't ever learn arithmetic--I tried hard, but I couldn't. The teacher told Aunt Sue that I had no brains for study, an' she took me away from school." Ann hated to make the admission, she had been led into it before she knew, and added quickly, "But I liked history and composition--I like to read. I've read my father's books through and through." "They don't know what good brains are in that school in the village," Edward said quietly. "My greatest pleasure is reading, too--you are fortunate to have grown up in a library." Ann was forced to admit that it was not a library, just a cupboard in her father's room stacked with books. Edward knew that, as a boy, Coats Penniman had been an omnivorous reader and something of a student. He selected in his mind the books Coats was likely to have read, many histories, the lives of great men, and the staider fiction which he himself had enjoyed when a boy, and Ann warmed into vivid pleasure when she found that they had acquaintances in common. She talked of George Eliot's characters as one would of friends, and lovingly of Maggie Tulliver, that creation of a great woman's brain always tenderly loved by misfits such as Ann. "She was a nobody's child," Ann said softly.