Your uncle assisted in her support and saved the remnant of her
property, so that she has, by careful and rigorous economy, been able to
educate you and Elise, and keep up a respectable appearance in a quiet
way.
Of course it was impossible to retain her place among the associates of
her better days, and you know how bitter this fact has always made
Elise. Your sister has the physical beauty and the overwhelming love of
money and power which characterized your father. She has a modicum of
your mother's sense of honour, but has been reared in a way not
calculated to develop much strength of character. Your mother has been a
slave to your sister. Elise is incapable of a deep, intense love for any
man, and your mother's pessimistic ideas of love and marriage have still
further acted upon her brain cells and atrophied whatever impulses may
have been latent in her nature, to love and be loved. These qualities
might have been developed had Elise been under the tutelage of some one
versed in the science of brain building, but your mother, like most
mothers, was not aware of the tremendous possibilities within her grasp,
or of the effect of the ideas she expressed in the hearing of her
children.
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