Chapter 17 - Page 2

poor father and of my poor, dear mother, and of
Mr. Bromptons and Mrs. Kenwards who had figured on their visiting lists
away back in the musty sixties.

"Your poor, dear father was precious badly off then," he said; "he had a
hard struggle for it. I had a bad time of it too; worm had got at all my
plantations, so I couldn't help him, poor chap. I think, mind you, Kenny
Granger treated him very badly. He might have done something for him--he
had influence, Kenny had."

Kenny was my uncle, the head of the family, the husband of my aunt.

"They weren't on terms," I said.

"Oh, I know, I know," the old man mumbled, "but still, for one's only
brother ... However, you contrive to do yourselves pretty well. You're
making your pile, aren't you? Someone said to me the other day--can't
remember who it was--that you were quite one of the rising men--quite
one of _the_ men."

"Very kind of someone," I said.

"And now I see," he went on, lifting up a copy of a morning paper, over
which I had found him munching his salmon cutlet, "now I see your sister
is going to marry a cabinet minister. Ah!" he shook his poor, muddled,
baked head, "I remember you both as tiny little dots."

"Why," I said, "she can hardly have been born then."

"Oh, yes," he affirmed, "that was when I came over in '78. She
remembered, too, that I brought her over an ivory doll--she remembered."

"You have seen her?" I asked.

"Oh, I called two or three weeks--no, months--ago. She's the image of
your poor, dear mother," he added, "at that age; I remarked upon it to
your aunt, but, of course, she could not remember. They were not married
until after the quarrel."

A sudden restlessness made me bolt the rest of my tepid dinner. With my
return to the upper world, and the return to me of a will, despair of a
sort had come back. I had before me the problem--the necessity--of
winning her. Once I was out of contact with her she grew smaller, less
of an idea, more of a person--that one could win. And there were two
ways. I must either woo her as one woos a person barred; must compel her
to take flight, to abandon, to cast away everything; or I must go to her
as an eligible suitor with the Etchingham acres and possibilities of a
future on that basis. This fantastic old man with his mumbled
reminiscences spoilt me for the last. One remembers sooner or later that
a county-man may not marry his reputed sister without scandal. And I
craved her intensely.

She had upon me the effect of an incredible stimulant; away from her I
was like a drunkard cut off from