I don't know whether women are very wise or very foolish, Lucia, but they seem to see things with different eyes to men.
My mother chose to marry, then, though my father was poor, and certain to remain so; though she was a gay spoiled girl of just twenty-one, and he a grave man not much under forty.

He sold out, and they came here.

I don't believe she ever was unhappy, or repented her marriage, and my father while she lived had all he cared for; since her death, indeed, there has been sorrow after sorrow." Maurice stopped a moment.
"But you know all that," he said hastily, and went on.

"My mother wrote several times to her father and to her brother, first after her arrival in Canada, then after the birth of her eldest child, and last of all just before she died; but no answer ever came.

After her death my father, as she wished, wrote again, but until this morning he had heard nothing from my grandfather for all these six-and-twenty years." "You have heard, then, at last ?" "At last.