"Yes, my mother was the only one of Madame Du Launy's children who married, and she married against her mother's will. My father was a very independent man, and when his wife's mother said that she would never forgive her for having married a poor man without family or position, he accepted this as final. He would not let my mother make any attempt at reconciliation, yet had she made such efforts I am sure that they would have been unsuccessful. He took her to Ohio first, and after a time they moved further west. We lived from the earliest time that I can remember, very simply and economically, but we had the advantage of good schools,--we two children, I mean--and when I showed a desire to go to college I was sent to the State University of the State where we had grown up. My brother, as I told you, was several years younger than I, and was only preparing for college when my father died. Our mother had died when we were little children, and in accordance with our father's wishes we had heard little about our grandmother besides her name. Once he had told us that she was an embittered old woman, and that she had not shown any regard for him, or my mother after her marriage. We knew that Boston had been our mother's home for a time, although most of her youth had been spent in wandering around Europe with her parents. After our father's death I thought once or twice of trying to find out whether or not our grandmother was alive. But my brother always dissuaded me, so keen was his resentment for the way she had treated our father. My telling him that this had been mere prejudice on her part--for she never had met my father--did not make him change his mind. He made me believe that it would be disrespect to both our parents if I should seek my grandmother. When I came to Boston, and heard about this peculiar Madame Du Launy, who lived opposite the school, I felt that she must be my grandmother, and some letters and a picture--a small water-color of the house--made it perfectly clear that in this surmise I was correct. Before the Bazaar I had decided in the course of the spring, to make myself known to Madame Du Launy, and I ought to tell you that it was your account of her gentler side that led me to think seriously of doing this."