"You!" He was very anxious to make her forget his roughness. "Apart
from my affection for you, mother," he said judicially, "I LIKE you. I
approve of you as I never probably shall approve of another woman.
Your peculiarities--the way your brown hair ripples back into that knot
"--surveying her critically. "And the way you always look as if you
had just come out of a bath, even on a grimy train; and your gowns, so
simple--and rich. I confess," he said gravely, "I can't always follow
your unsteady little ideas when you talk. They frisk about so. It is
the difference probably between the man's mind and the woman's.
Besides, we have been separated for so many years! But I soon will
understand you. I know that while you keep yourself apart from all the
world you open your heart to me."

"Wrap the rug about my feet, George," she said hastily, and then sent
him away upon an errand, looking after him uneasily.

It was very pleasant to hear her boy thus formally sum up his opinion
of her. But when he found that it was based upon a lie?

For Frances, candid enough to the world, had deceived her son ever
since he was born.

George had always believed that she had inherited a fortune from his
father. It gave solidity and comfort to his life to think of her in
the stately old mansion on the shores of Delaware Bay, with nothing to
do except to be beautiful and gracious, as befitted a well-born woman.
It pleased him, in a lofty, generous way, that his father (whom she had
taught him to reverence as the most chivalric of gentlemen) had left
him wholly dependent upon her. It was a legal fiction, of course. He
was the heir--the crown prince. He had always been liberally supplied
with money at school and at Harvard. Her income was large. No doubt
the dear soul mismanaged the estates fearfully, but now he would have
leisure to take care of them.

Now, the fact was that Colonel Waldeaux had been a drunken spendthrift
who had left nothing. The house and farm always had belonged to his
wife. She had supported George by her own work all of his life. She
could not save money, but she had the rarer faculty of making it. She
had raised fine fruit and flowers for the Philadelphia market; she had
traded in high breeds of poultry and cattle, and had invested her
earnings shrewdly. With these successes she had been able to provide
George with money to spend freely at college. She lived scantily at
home, never expecting an