' The
innumerable young bank clerks and journalists and teachers and college
students who fluttered about her burnt their moth-wings to no avail. But
that _rara avis_, a really rich man, found her very kind to him.
"Well, you can guess the result. When she was not quite eighteen, a man
who was beyond question a millionaire proposed to her, and she accepted
him. He was nearly twenty years older than she was, and was certainly
big, heavy, and oversated. Her uncle--her father's brother--came to her
mother, and told her certain plain facts about this man, and his father
and grandfather before him, and charged her to tell the child what she
would be doing if she married him. Perhaps if the uncle had gone to the
girl herself, it might have done some good--perhaps it wouldn't have--you
see she was so tired of being poor that she thought nothing else
mattered. Anyway, he felt a woman could break these ugly facts to a young
girl better than a man, and he was right. Only, you see, the mother never
told at all; not that she really feared that her daughter would be
foolish and play false to her excellent training--but, still, it was just
as well to be on the safe side.
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