`` Why not ? '' asked Worth , her serious grey eyes looking straight into Aunt Charlotte 's troubled dark ones . Aunt Charlotte understood that Elizabeth had never told Worth anything about her family 's resentment of her marriage . It was not a pleasant thing to have to explain it all to Elizabeth 's child , but it must be done . `` I think , my dear , '' she said gently , `` that I will have to tell you a little bit of our family history that may not be very pleasant to hear or tell . Perhaps you do n't know that when your mother married we -- we -- did not exactly approve of her marriage . Perhaps we were mistaken ; at any rate it was wrong and foolish to let it come between us and her as we have done . But that is how it was . None of us approved , as I have said , but none of us was so bitter as your Uncle Paul . Your mother was his favourite sister , and he was very deeply attached to her . She was only a year younger than he . When he bought the Greenwood farm she went and kept house for him for three years before her marriage . When she married , Paul was terribly angry . He was always a strange man , very determined and unyielding . He said he would never forgive her , and he never has . He has never married , and he has lived so long alone at Greenwood with only deaf old Mrs. Bree to keep house for him that he has grown odder than ever . One of us wanted to go and keep house for him , but he would not let us . And -- I must tell you this although I hate to -- he was very angry when he heard we had invited you to visit us , and he said he would not come near the Grange as long as you were here . Oh , you ca n't realize how bitter and obstinate he is . We pleaded with him , but I think that only made him worse .
We have felt so bad over it , your Aunt Ellen and your Uncle George and I , but we can do nothing XXXXX all . ''
although as at for into near than that to with