'
When Winifred said this I forgot my promise not to interrupt her
narrative, and exclaimed,
'And you believed this infamous libel, Winnie?'
'To say that I believed it as a simple statement of fact would of
course be wrong. I never doubted you loved me as a child.'
'As a child! Do you then think that I did not love you that night on
Raxton sands?'
'I did not doubt that you loved me then. But wealth, I had been told,
is so demoralising, and I thought your never coming forward to find
me and protect me in my illness might have something to do with
inconstancy. Anyhow, these thoughts combined with my dread of your
mother to prevent me from writing to you.'
'Winnie, Winnie!' I said, 'these theories of the so-called advanced
thinkers, whom your aunt taught you to believe in--these ideas that
love and wealth cannot exist together, are prejudices as narrow and
as blind as those of an opposite kind which have sapped the natures
of certain members of my own family.'
'The sight of your dear sad face when I first saw it here was proof
enough of that,' she said.
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