Briefly, then, the housekeeper's story was this: She was almost forty years old, and had been the sister-mother of a

large family of children. One by one they had died, and been buried

beside their parents in a little town in the Middle West. There was

only one sister left, the baby, Lucy. On her the older girl had

lavished all the love of an impulsive and emotional nature. When Anne,

the elder, was thirty-two and Lucy was nineteen, a young man had come

to the town. He was going east, after spending the summer at a

celebrated ranch in Wyoming--one of those places where wealthy men send

worthless and dissipated sons, for a season of temperance, fresh air

and hunting. The sisters, of course, knew nothing of this, and the

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young man's ardor rather carried them away. In a word, seven years

before, Lucy Haswell had married a young man whose name was given as

Aubrey Wallace.

Anne Haswell had married a carpenter in her native town, and was a

widow. For three months everything went fairly well. Aubrey took his

bride to Chicago, where they lived at a hotel. Perhaps the very

unsophistication that had charmed him in Valley Mill jarred on him in

the city. He had been far from a model husband, even for the three

months, and when he disappeared Anne was almost thankful. It was

different with the young wife, however. She drooped and fretted, and on

the birth of her baby boy, she had died. Anne took the child, and

named him Lucien.

Anne had had no children of her own, and on Lucien she had lavished all

her aborted maternal instinct. On one thing she was determined,

however: that was that Aubrey Wallace should educate his boy. It was a

part of her devotion to the child that she should be ambitious for him:

he must have every opportunity. And so she came east. She drifted

around, doing plain sewing and keeping a home somewhere always for the

boy. Finally, however, she realized that her only training had been

domestic, and she put the boy in an Episcopalian home, and secured the

position of housekeeper to the Armstrongs. There she found Lucien's

father, this time under his own name. It was Arnold Armstrong.

I gathered that there was no particular enmity at that time in Anne's

mind. She told him of the boy, and threatened exposure if he did not

provide for him. Indeed, for a time, he did so. Then he realized that

Lucien was the ruling passion in this lonely woman's life. He found

out where the child was hidden, and threatened to take him away. Anne

was frantic. The positions became reversed. Where Arnold had given

money for Lucien's support, as the years went on he forced money from

Anne Watson instead until she was always penniless. The lower Arnold

sank in the scale, the heavier his demands became. With the rupture

between him and his family, things were worse. Anne took the child

from the home and hid him in a farmhouse near Casanova, on the

Claysburg road. There she went sometimes to see the boy, and there he

had taken fever. The people were Germans, and he called the farmer's

wife Grossmutter. He had grown into a beautiful boy, and he was all

Anne had to live for.




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