ep
since she came out," Anne always said, "and I dare say she was behind
the times even then."

Meanwhile, Hector was dressing in his luxurious mahogany-panelled room.
Everything in the house was solid and prosperous, as befitted a family
who had had few reverses and sufficient perspicacity to marry a rich
heiress now and then at right moments in their history.

This early Georgian house had been in the then Lady Bracondale's dower,
and still retained its fine carvings and Old-World state.

"How shall I see her again?" was all the thought which ran in Lord
Bracondale's head.

"She won't be at a ball, but she might chance to have thought of the
opera. It would be a place Mr. Brown would like to exhibit her at. I
shall certainly go."

Lady Anningford was tucked up on a sofa in her little sitting-room when
her brother arrived at her charming house in Charles Street. Her husband
had been sent off to a dinner without her, and she was expecting her
brother with impatience. She loved Hector as many sisters do a handsome,
popular brother, but rather more than that, and she had fine senses and
understood him.

She did not cover him with caresses and endearments when she saw him;
she never did.

"Poor Hector has enough of them from mother," she explained, when Monica
Ellerwood asked her once why she was so cold. "And men don't care for
those sort of things, except from some one else's sister or wife."

"Dear old boy!" was all she said as he came in. "I am glad to see you
back."

Then in a moment or two they went down to dinner, talking of various
things. And all through it, while the servants were in the room, she
prattled about Paris and their friends and the gossip of the day; and
she had a shocking cold in her head, too, and might well have been
forgiven for being dull.

But when they were at last alone, back in the little sitting-room, she
looked at him hard, and her voice, which was rather deep like his, grew
full of tenderness as she asked: "What is it, Hector? Tell me about it
if I can help you."

He got up and stood with his back to the wood fire, which sparkled in
the grate, comforting the eye with its brightness, while the wind and
rain moaned outside.

"You can't help me, Anne; no one can," he said. "I have been rather
badly burned, but there is nothing to be done. It is my own fault--so
one must just bear it."

"Is it the--eh--the Frenchwoman?" his sister asked, gently.

"Good Lord, no!"

"Or the