l, you were honest and told me all,
never pretending, as you had at first essayed to do, that it was out of
any lingering regard for myself as your sister's friend that you sought me
now, but simply on account of my availability. Had there been some bright
young beauty with wealth and station at hand, no thought of me would ever
have entered your mind: all this I understood at once from your half
confessions--all this, I was glad to find, you had at least enough honor
to let me know, although you risked what to you in your actual situation
was very perilous--a refusal.

I asked until the next day to consider the matter--whether it would be
better to take service with you, exchange for my boarding, clothing and
incidental expenses the daily care of your comfort and pleasure, or earn
my bread in the old wearing way. And the second day after that we were
married. That is all. I believe that to be a simple statement of the facts
in your case: I am right, am I not?

The day after our marriage your lady-love and her paternal ancestor came.
At my own suggestion and with your eager consent I received them, and the
result you know.

Now for my own reasons for this strange marriage. You are aware that my
father was a professor of mathematics in various schools and colleges of
the city where he lived, teaching in the school, among others, in which
your sister and myself were pupils. I believe you know that when a young
man he had eloped with and married one of his scholars, the daughter of a
rich and proud family, who discarded her. For years she was a stranger to
them, until her husband had won a name and handsome fortune for himself:
then she was taken into favor again, her husband's distinction in the
scientific world being supposed to add lustre to the family name. Alas for
us! it was a favor that has cost us dear. I was their only child. When my
sweet, pretty mother lay dying she left to me, her sixteen-year-old child,
my dreamy, unworldly father as a legacy. "Take care of him: he knows no
guile, and your uncles will wrong him if they can," she said. And they
did, or one of them. Ere the bitter agony of my mother's death had enabled
him to return to his duties, it was discovered that one of her brothers
had forged his name and literally stripped him of everything.

Of course, then he went to work again to earn our daily bread--not with
his old love or ability, but in an inert, feeble way that was pitiful to
see. I think fr