"Your affectionate niece,
"MONICA ELLERWOOD."

Which epistle jarred upon Hector's mother when she read it over coffee
at her solitary dinner on the following night.

"Poor dear Monica!" she said to herself. "I wonder where she got this
strain from--her father's family, I suppose--I wish she would not be
so--bald."

Then she sat down and wrote to her son--she was not even going to the
opera that night. And if she had looked up in the tall mirror opposite,
she would have seen a beautiful, stately lady with a puckered, plaintive
frown on her face.

If a woman absolutely worships a man, even if she is only his mother,
she is bound to spend many moments of unhappiness, and Lady Bracondale
was no exception to the general rule. Hector had always gone his own
way, and there were several aspects of his life she disapproved of.
These visits to Paris--his antipathy to matrimony--his boredom with
girls--such nice girls she knew, too, and had often thrown him
with!--his delight in big-game shooting in alarming and impossible
countries--and, above all, his absolute indifference to Morella
Winmarleigh, the only woman who really and truly in her heart of hearts
Lady Bracondale thought worthy of him, although she would have accepted
several other girls as choosing the lesser evil to bachelorhood. But
Morella Winmarleigh was perfection! She owned the enormous property
adjoining Bracondale; she was twenty-six years old, of unblemished
reputation, nice looking, and not--not one of those modern women who are
bound to cause anxieties. Under any circumstances one could count upon
Morella Winmarleigh behaving with absolute propriety. A girl born to be
a mother-in-law's joy.