American Monica came back so full of?"

"The American? What American? Surely she did not mean my dear Mrs.
McBride?"

"I don't know her name," Anne said, "and I don't want you to say a thing
about it, dear, if I can't help you; only it just grieves me to see you
looking so sad and distrait, so I felt I must try if there is anything I
can do for you. Mother has been on thorns and dying of fuss over this
Frenchwoman and the diamond chain--("How the devil did she hear about
that?" thought Hector)--until Monica came back with a tale of your
devotion to an American."

"One would think I was eighteen years old and in leading-strings still,
upon my word," he interrupted, with an irritated laugh. "When will she
realize I can take care of myself?"

"Never," said Lady Anningford, "until you have married Morella
Winmarleigh; then she would feel you were in good hands."

He laughed again--bitterly this time.

"Morella Winmarleigh! I would not be faithful to her for a week!"

"I wonder if you would be faithful to any woman, Hector? I have often
thought you do not know what it means to love--really to love."

"You were perfectly right once. I did not know," he said; "and perhaps I
don't now, unless to feel the whole world is a sickening blank without
one woman is to love--really to love."

Anne noticed the weariness of his pose and the vibration in his deep
voice. She was stirred and interested as she had never been. This dear
brother of hers was not wont to care very much. In the past it had
always been the women who had sighed and longed and he who had been
amused and pleased. She could not remember a single occasion in the last
ten years when he had seemed to suffer, although she had seen him
apparently devoted to numbers of women.

"And what are you going to do?" she asked, with sympathy, "She is
married, of course?"

"Yes."

"Hector, don't you want me to speak about it?"

He took a chair now by his sister's sofa, and he began to turn over the
papers rather fast which lay on a table near by.

"Yes, I do," he said, "because, after all, you can do something for me.
I want you to be particularly kind to her, will you, Anne, dear?"

"But, of course; only you must tell me who she is and where I shall find
her."

"You will find her at Claridge's, and she is only the wife of an
impossible Australian millionaire called Brown--Josiah Brown."

"Poor dear Hector, how terrible!" thought Anne. "It is not the American,
t