"How well I could now understand my grandfather's silent fury, and my mother's remorseful bitterness! By her own infidelity, she had made herself the niece of the man whose wife she might have been, and whose wealth, position, and power would all have been laid at her feet. Also, I am inclined to think she had not been long in realising and regretting the treasure she had lost, in the love of the older man. I always knew mamma had few ideals, and no illusions. Many of my own pronounced views on the vital things in life are the product of her disillusionising philosophy. Poor mamma! Oh, Cousin David, I see it hurts you each time I say 'poor mamma'! Yet you cannot know what it means, when one's kindest thoughts of one's mother must needs be prefixed by the adjective 'poor.' Yes, I know it is a sad state of things when pity must be called in to soften filial judgment. But then life is full of these sad things, isn't it? Anyway I have found it so. Had my mother left me one single illusion regarding men and marriage, I might not now find myself in the difficult position in which I am placed to-day.

"However, for one thing I have always been thankful—one hour when I can remember my mother with admiration and respect: that morning at breakfast, in our humble suburban villa, when she tore up and flung to the flames Uncle Falcon's cheque for a thousand pounds.

"A close intimacy, and a deep, though undemonstrative, affection, soon arose between Uncle Falcon and myself. His life-long fidelity to his love for my mother seemed to transfer itself to me, and to be at last content in having found an object. My every wish was met and gratified. He insisted upon allowing me a thousand a year, merely as pocket-money, while still defraying all large expenses for me, himself. Hunters, dogs, everything I could wish, were secured and put at my disposal. His last gift to me was the motor-car which brought you here to-day.

"His sense of humour was delightful; his shrewd keen judgment of men and things, instructive and entertaining. But—he had one peculiarity. So sure was he of his own discernment, and so accustomed to bend others to his iron will, that if one held a different view from his and ventured to say so, he could never rest until he had won in the argument and brought one round to his way of thinking. He was never irritable over the point; he kept his temper, and controlled his tongue. But he never rested until he had convinced and defeated a mental opponent.