I imagine something like Miss
Sherwood's kind--though not so rich and not having such social
standing. She died when you were born. She never knew what your
father's business actually was; he passed for a country gentleman. He
was about the smoothest and biggest crook of his time, and a straight
crook if there is such a thing."
"Larry!" she breathed.
"He kept this gentleman-farmer side of his life and his marriage
entirely hidden from his crook acquaintances; that is, from all except
one whom he trusted as his most loyal friend. Before you were old
enough to remember, he was tripped up and sent away on a twenty-year
sentence."
"And he's--he's still in prison?" whispered Maggie.
Larry did not heed the interruption. "He had developed the highest
kind of ambition for you. He wanted you to grow up a fine simple woman
like your mother--something like Miss Sherwood. He did not want you
ever to know the sort of life he had known; and he did not want you to
be handicapped by the knowledge that you had a crook for a father. He
still had intact your mother's fortune, a small one, but an honest
one. So he put you and the money in the hands of his trusted friend,
with the instructions that you were to be brought up as the girls of
the nicest families are brought up, and believing yourself an orphan.
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