ed 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.

"And when love comes to you, _as it will come_,--for no woman with your
eyes and your mouth ever yet lived a loveless life!--never forget
that it is the biggest thing in the world, the one altogether good and
perfect gift. Don't let any twopenny-halfpenny considerations of wo