“For we should have been married, Sara, your mother and I, had I not been a poor man. We were engaged, but at that time, I was only a younger son, with a younger son's meager portion, and the prospect of my falling heir to Barrow seemed of all things the most improbable. And Pauline Malincourt, your mother, had been taught to abhor the idea of living on small means--trained to regard her beauty and breeding as marketable assets, to go to the highest bidder. For, although her parents came of fine old stock--there's no better blood in England than the Malincourt strain, my dear--they were deadly hard-up. So hard-up, that when they died--as the result of a carriage accident which occurred a week after Pauline's marriage--they left nothing behind them but debts which your father liquidated. “Of your father, Caleb Tennant, the millionaire, I will not write, seeing that, after all, you are his child. It is enough to say that he was a hard man, and that he and your mother led a very unhappy life together, so unhappy that at last she left him, choosing rather to live in utter poverty than remain with him. He never forgave her for leaving him, and when he died, he willed every penny he possessed to some scoundrelly cousin of his--who is presumably enjoying the inheritance which should have been yours. “That is your family history, my dear, and it is right that you should know it--and know what you have to fight against. To be a Malincourt is at once to have a curse and a blessing hung round your neck. The Malincourts were originally of French extraction--descendants of the _haute noblesse_ of old France--cursed with the devil's own pride and passionate self-will, and blessed with looks and brains and charm above the average. They never bend; they break sooner. And I think you've got the lot, Sara--the full inheritance. “Your mother was a true Malincourt. She could not bend, and when things went awry, she broke. “You must never think hardly of her, for she had been brought up in that atmosphere of almost desperate pride which is too frequently the curse of the poverty-stricken aristocrat. She made a ghastly mistake, and paid for it afterwards every day of her life. And she was urged into it by her father, who declined to recognize me in any way, and by her mother, who made her life at home a simple hell--as a clever society woman can make of any young girl's life if she chooses. “Just before she died, she sent for me and gave you into my care, begging me to shield you from spoiling your life as she had spoiled hers. “I've done what I could. You are at least independent. No one can drive you with the spur of poverty into selling yourself, as she was driven. But there are a hundred other rocks in life against which you may wreck your happiness, and remember, in the long run, you sink or swim by your own force of character.