"A little. We have the yearly interest on it still. 'Tis very small, yet a great help--to my aunts. I tell that only to say that papa would never touch it when he and my aunts--and afterward mamma--were in very narrow places." Chester perceived another reason for the telling of it; the niece wanted to escape the credit of being the sole support of her aunts. She read his thought but ignored it. "Papa was very old for his age," she continued. "You may see that by his being in the battle with _grandpere_ at thirteen years. And because of that precocity he got much training of the mind--and spirit--from _grandpere_ that usually is got much later. I think that is what my aunts mean when they tell you papa's life was dramatic. It _was_ so, yet not in the manner they mean, the manner of _grandpere's_ life; you understand?" "You mean it was not melodramatic?" "Ah! the word I wanted! Mr. Chester, when we get over being children, those of us who do, why do we try so hard to live without melodrama?" "Oh, mademoiselle, you know well enough. You know that's what melodrama does, itself? What is it, in essence, but a struggle to rise out of itself into a higher drama, of the spirit----?" "A divine comedy! Yes. Well, that is what my father's life seems to me." "With tragic elements in it, of course?" "Oh! How could it be high comedy without? But except that one battle the tragedy was not--eh--crude, like _grandpere's_; was not physical. Once he said to me: 'There are things in life, in the refined life, very quiet things, that are much more tragic than bloodshed or death or the defying of death.'" "In the refined life," Chester said musingly. "Yes! and he _was_ refined, yet never weak. 'Strength,' he said, 'valor, truth, they are the foundations; better be dead than without them. Yet one can have them, in crude form, and still better be dead. The noble, the humane, the chaste, the beautiful, 'tis with them we build the superstructure, the temple, of life--Mr. Chester, if you knew French I could tell you that better." "I doubt it. Go on, please, time's a-flying." "Well, you see how tragic was that life! Papa saw it and said: 'It shall not be tragic alone. I will build on it a comedy higher, finer, than tragedy. That's what life is for; mine, yours, the world's,' he said to me. Mr. Chester, you can imagine how a daughter would love a father like that, and also how mamma loved him--for years--before they could marry." "Your mother was a Creole, I suppose?"