“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, then?” she said, aloud.

“There never was any American,” he exclaimed.  “Monica is the most ridiculous gossip, and always sees wrong.  If she had not Jack to keep her from talking so much she would not leave one of us with a rag of character.”

“I will go to-morrow and call there, Hector,” Lady Anningford said.  “My cold is sure to be better; and if she is not in, shall I write a note and ask her to lunch?  The husband, too, I suppose?”

“I fear so.  Anne, you are a brick.”

Then he said good-night, and went to the opera.

Left to herself, Lady Anningford thought:  “I suppose she is some flashy, pretty creature who has caught Hector’s fancy, the poor darling.  One never has chanced to find an Australian quite, quite a lady.  I almost wish he would marry Morella and have done with it.”

Then she lay on her sofa and pondered many things.

She was a year older than her brother, and they had always been the closest friends and comrades.