a weekly allowance for you
while a voluntary exile from the home where you have been only too well
treated. In other words, you want to be paid for your disobedience.
Even if your father were weak enough to think of complying with this
extraordinary request, I should do my best to dissuade him."

"Small doubt of that!" said Carl, bitterly.

"In my sorrow for your waywardness, I am comforted by the thought that
Peter is too good and conscientious ever to follow your example. While
you are away, he will do his utmost to make up to your father for his
disappointment in you. That you may grow wise in time, and turn
at length from the error of your ways, is the earnest hope of your
stepmother,

"Anastasia Crawford."

"It makes me sick to read such a letter as that, Gilbert," said Carl.
"And to have that sneak and thief--as he turned out to be--Peter, set up
as a model for me, is a little too much."

"I never knew there were such women in the world!" returned Gilbert.
"I can understand your feelings perfectly, after my interview of
yesterday."

"She thinks even worse of you than of me," said Carl, with a faint
smile.

"I have no doubt Peter shares her sentiments. I didn't make many friends
in your family, it must be confessed."

"You did me a service, Gilbert, and I shall not soon forget it."

"Where did your stepmother come from?" asked Gilbert, thoughtfully.

"I don't know. My father met her at some summer resort. She was staying
in the same boarding house, she and the angelic Peter. She lost no time
in setting her cap for my father, who was doubtless reported to her as a
man of property, and she succeeded in capturing him."

"I wonder at that. She doesn't seem very fascinating."

"She made herself very agreeable to my father, and was even affectionate
in her manner to me, though I couldn't get to like her. The end was that
she became Mrs. Crawford. Once installed in our house, she soon threw
off the mask and showed herself in her true colors, a cold-hearted,
selfish and disagreeable woman."

"I wonder your father doesn't recognize her for what she is."

"She is very artful, and is politic enough to treat him well. She has
lost no opportunity of prejudicing him against me. If he were not an
invalid she would find her task more difficult."

"Did she have any property when your father married her?"

"Not that I have been able to discover. She is scheming to have my
father leave the lion's share of hi