This was
the barrier at my lips. But her woman's intuition must have told her
that she was a part and parcel of my existence.
I had what is called a forlorn hope: a rich uncle who was a planter in
Louisiana. His son and I were his only heirs. But this old planter
had a mortal antipathy to my side of the family. When my mother, his
sister, married Alfred Winthrop in 1859, at the time when the North and
South were approaching the precipice of a civil war, he considered all
family ties obliterated. We never worried much about it. When mother
died he softened to the extent of being present at the funeral. He
took small notice of my father, but offered to adopt me if I would
assume his name. I clasped my father's hand in mine and said nothing.
The old man stared at me for a moment, then left the house. That was
the first and last time I ever saw him. Sometimes I wondered if he
would remember me in his will. This, of course, was only when I had
taken Phyllis somewhere, or when some creditor had lost patience. One
morning in January, five years after my second meeting with Phyllis, I
sat at my desk in the office.
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