"And you--didn't? Why not?" "As you said, for fear she was the wrong kind" "It was too much to hope that she would be anything else," his aunt broke in, harshly. "Shut your mouth, Hugh; you look like a fool. Think what she might have done with them--she and some of those unspeakable papers." "Oh, I see! I see!" groaned the young man. "But how awful not to do the very last thing he wanted! Did you ever try to find out what kind of a person she was?" "She took the money. That was enough," cried Miss Fowler. "She got her share, just as though she had been his legal wife." Hugh gave her a dazed look. "You don't mean that she was his illegal one? I never--" "Oh no, no!" Mr. Fowler interposed. "We have no reason to think that she was otherwise than respectable. Maria, you allow most unfortunate implications to result from your choice of words. We know very little, really." "He met her in Paris when he gave that course of lectures over there. We know that much. And she was an American student--from Virginia, wasn't it? But that was over twenty years ago. Didn't he see her after that?" "I am sure he did not." "She wasn't with him when he was knocking about Europe?" "Certainly not. She came home that very year and married. As her letter states, she was a widow with three children at the time of his death." "I have always considered it providential that he didn't know she was a widow," observed Miss Maria, primly. Her nephew shot her a look that admitted his intermittent amusement in his aunt Maria, but definitely gave her up. He carefully leaned the portfolio inside the arm of the sofa that neighboured the desk, and picked up the long envelope. "A copy of my letter," said Mr. Fowler. To his sister, watching him as he watched Hugh, came the unaccountable impression that his sure and chiselled surface covered a nervous anxiety. Then Miss Maria, being a product of the same school, dismissed the idea as absurd. Hugh raised bewildered eyes from the letters. "I can't exactly remember," he said. "I was so cut up at the time. Did I ever actually read this before or was I merely told about it? I went back for Midyear's, you know, almost at once. I know my consent was asked, but--" "You--did not see it." "And you, Aunt Maria, of course you knew about it!" "Certainly," said Miss Fowler, on the defensive. "As usual in business matters, your uncle decided for me. We have been accustomed to act as a family always. To me the solidarity of the family it more than the interest of any member of it." "Oh, I know that the Fowler family is the noblest work of God." The young man looked from one to the other as he might have regarded two strangers whose motives it was his intention to find out. "I've been brought up on that. But what I want to know now is the whyness of this letter." "What do you mean?" Mr. Fowler's voice cut the pause like a trowel executing the middle justice on an earthworm.