‘You have plenty of money of your own?’ Jerrie said, with another upward toss of her golden head.

The question was full of sarcasm, but Tom did not see it, and answered at once: 

’Why, yes, or I shall have in time.  Uncle Arthur, you know, is in no condition to make a will now.  It would not stand a minute.  All the lawyers say that.’

‘You have taken counsel, then?’

The parasol dug a great hole in the soft pines and was in danger of being broken, as Tom replied: 

’Oh, yes; we are sure of that.  Whatever Uncle Arthur has, and it is more than a million, will go to father, and, after him, to Maude and me; so you are sure to be rich and to be the mistress of Tracy Park, which will naturally come to me.  Think, Jerrie, what a different life you will lead at the Park House from what you do now, washing old Mrs. Crawford’s stockings and Harold’s overalls.’

‘Yes, I am thinking,’ Jerrie answered, very low; and if Tom had followed the end of her parasol, he would have seen that it was forming the word Gretchen in front of him.

‘Suppose Mr. Arthur has a wife somewhere?’ Jerrie asked.

‘A wife!’ Tom exclaimed.  ’That is impossible.  We should have heard of that.’

‘Who was Gretchen?’ was the next query.

’Oh, some sweetheart, I suppose—­some little German girl with whom he amused himself a while and then cast off, as men usually do such incumbrances.’

Tom did not quite know himself what he was saying, or what it implied, and he was not at all prepared to see the parasol stuck straight into the ground, while Jerrie sprang to her feet and confronted him fiercely.

’Tom Tracy!  If you mean to insinuate a thing which is not good and pure against Gretchen, I’ll never speak to you as long as I live!  Take back what you said about Mr. Arthur’s casting her off!  She was his wife, and you know it?  Dead, perhaps—­I think she is; but she was his wife—­his true and lawful wife; and—­I—­sometimes—­’

She could not add ‘think she was my mother,’ for the words stuck in her throat, where her heart seemed to be beating wildly and choking her utterance.

‘Why, Jerrie,’ Tom said, startled at her excited appearance, and anxious to appease her, ’what can ail you?  I hardly know what I said, and if I have offended you, I am sorry, I know nothing of Gretchen; her face is a good one and a pretty one, and Maude says you look like her; though I don’t see it, for I think you far prettier than she.  Perhaps she was my uncle’s wife—­I guess she was:  but that does not injure my prospects, for of course she is dead, or she would have turned up before this time.  We have nothing to fear from her.’

‘She may have left a child.  What then?’ Jerrie asked, with as steady a voice as she could command.

‘Pshaw! humbug!’ Tom replied, with a laugh.  ’That is impossible.  A child would have been heard from before this time.  There is no child; I’m sure I hope not, as that would seriously interfere with our prospects.  Think of some one—­say a young lady—­walking in upon us some day and claiming to be Arthur Tracy’s daughter!’