“Your mother should have written me she was in such dire straits. I knew that your father was living extravagantly in Europe but I never suspected he was spending his capital. He told me on both his visits that he was temporarily hard up. The first time I lent him a large sum of money. The second time I refused, under the advice of Mr. Donald’s father, and reproached him with extravagance. He flew into a terrible temper, flung himself out of the house, and never even wrote to me again. Well, he died soon after. . . . But I would never have permitted his wife and child to suffer.” “My mother would have starved before she would have taken a cent from a Carteret.” “She should not have permitted her child to starve. . . . However—there is one question I should like to ask before we go further—and I have other things to say. I wish you would move your chair into the light. I can hardly see you.” Gita moved her chair obediently although with an impatient jerk. Mrs. Carteret regarded her grandchild with a penetrating sharp gaze. “Answer me this question, truthfully, and without quibbling. Have you actually no pride of race?” “I think such things ridiculous.” “You do? And would you—honestly, mind you—rather be a Jenks or a Hobbs than a Carteret? With no generations of breeding and education behind you? Just a common young woman with rudely modeled features and a blowsy prettiness, without an atom of distinction? Answer me that.” Gita moved uneasily. “It is good enough as a background, I suppose. But I’m no snob.” “No Carteret was ever a snob. But they were aristocrats. Vulgar people do not know the difference, and you are not vulgar, absurd as you are. There are worse things in life than poverty, and you may thank your stars you have escaped a few of them, owing to your despised Carteret ancestry. You begin where they left off, instead of struggling from the gutter upward. You realize that, I hope?” “Yes, I realize it, grandmother. As you say, there are a few things I don’t have to overcome. I know the proper use of forks and I dislike a common voice and bad table manners. Being a Carteret, so far, hasn’t been of much use to me, but I am quite willing to make use of what little it may do for me in the future. Does that satisfy you?” “Not at all. But I trust to time to bring you to your senses.” “What next?” “I was about to say, when my mind wandered to the past—as an old woman’s will—that my intention never to marry died a natural death when your grandfather came back from Europe, where he had been in the diplomatic service for years. I married him six weeks later. You have had an unfortunate experience which has given you all sorts of distorted views and ideas, but you will get over them in time. Wait until the right man comes along.” Gita writhed as much at the old-fashioned idiom as at the idea involved. She set her lips in a straight line. “I shall never marry. Might as well make up your mind to it, grandmother.”