“Mother is still in the early seventies; she has never advanced a step 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 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.”