t I have not been treated most
unfairly, most vilely," said he, his lips still compressed.

"Many years ago," said Mr. Thorpe, fixing his gaze on the lazy fire, "I
asked Anne's grandmother to marry me. I suppose I thought that I was
unalterably in love with her. I was the very rich son of a very rich man,
and--pardon my conceit--what you would call an exceedingly good catch. Well,
in those days things were not as they are now. The young lady, a great
beauty and amazingly popular, happened to be in love with Roger Blair, a
good-looking chap with no fortune and no prospects. She took the advice of
her mother and married the man she loved, disdaining my riches and me as
well. Roger wasn't much of a success as a husband, but he was a source of
enlightenment and education to his wife. Not in the way you would suspect,
however. He managed in very short order to convince her that it is a very
ignorant mother who permits her daughter to marry a man without means.
They hadn't been married three years when his wife had learned her lesson.
It was too late to get rid of Roger, and by that time I was happily
married to a girl who was quite as rich as I, and could afford to do as
she pleased. So, you see, Anne's grandmother had to leave me out of the
case, even though Roger would have been perfectly delighted to have given
her sufficient grounds for divorce. I think you knew Anne's grandmother,
Braden?" He paused for an answer, a sly, appraising look in his eyes.
Receiving no response except a slight nod of the head, he chuckled softly
and went on with the history.

"Poor soul, she's gone to her reward. Now we come to Anne's mother. She
was an only child,--and one was quite enough, I assure you. No mother ever
had greater difficulty in satisfactorily placing a daughter than had Mrs.
Blair. There was an army of young but not very dependable gentlemen who
would have married her like a flash, notwithstanding her own poverty, had
it not been for the fact that Mrs. Blair was so thoroughly educated by
this time that she couldn't even contemplate a mistake in her
calculations. She had had ample proof that love doesn't keep the wolf from
the door, nor does it draw five per cent, as some other bonds do. She
brought Constance up in what is now considered to be the most approved
fashion in high society. The chap who had nothing but health and ambition
and honour and brains to offer, in addition to that unprofitable thing
called love, was a vipe