It had been Freeman’s intention to make his will and leave George the income of a certain sum, but death came suddenly, before the will was made, and there was no provision for George. The whole of Freeman’s large fortune went to his widow and infant daughter a few months old. Between George and his sister-in-law there did not exist the most amicable relations. She looked upon him as a dreaming neer-do-weel, through whom her husband had lost a great deal of money. Of the yearly allowance she knew nothing, and as George was too proud to enlighten her he found himself at his brother’s death without money and with no means of support, unless he went to work,—a new state of things for him, as he had never in his life been really fatigued from any physical exercise. But the strain had come, and he met it by hiring as a clerk in a cotton mill in Rocky Point, where he married a beautiful young girl, who died when her baby was four weeks old. Her home had always been with her aunt and uncle, Ephraim and Mary Wood, plain, old-fashioned people, with hearts larger than their means, and hands ready to give help to all who needed it. They were very fond of their niece and very proud of her alliance with George Tracy, whom they looked upon as a prince in disguise. A poor one, it is true, but still a prince, and they gave him a home as soon as he was married, and when his young wife died and left a little girl, whom they called for its mother, they still kept him with them and never lost their high opinion of him as one whom it was an honor to have in their family. Of her father, Alice had some remembrance, as she was nearly five years old when he died suddenly, as his brother had done. Tall, well-dressed, with long, white hands, of which he took a great deal of care; always looking for a seat and always reading when he found one, was the picture she carried of him. Of her mother’s personality she knew nothing, except what she heard from others, and what she gathered from an old-time photograph of a young girl with a lovely face and large, beautiful blue eyes, with a laugh in them which the bungling photographer had not been able to spoil, as he had the pose of the head and hands. When George died Mr. Wood felt it incumbent upon him to notify Mrs. Freeman Tracy, who was at Richfield Springs, having an ideal time, she told Mrs. Wood, rather complainingly, when she came to the funeral with her daughter Helen, who was nearly three years older than Alice. It was Helen’s first experience in a country farmhouse like the Woods, and some of her remarks on what she saw were not very complimentary. But Alice was too young to resent them, or understand. She admired her cousin greatly, especially her bronze boots, with their high, French heels. “I wish I had some like ’em. Do they cost more than a dollar?” she said, with a rueful glance at her own coarser shoes.