His one brief hour of popularity had long since passed. There were unpleasant stories about him. He was, for instance, sole trustee under his father’s will, and the money was equally divided between himself and the two unmarried daughters, at whose deaths it would revert to him, failing their marriages, in which case the husbands would have life-interests in the estate, and, if there were issue, the children would eventually succeed. The younger of the two Miss Brands was fragile and delicate; a course of the systematic bullying and petty tyrannies by which a man can make his sisters’ lives unbearable, made her run away one night and take refuge in a convent, whose stern _régime_ presently brought about her death. The elder sister, stronger in will and brain, was more difficult to deal with; but there are many forms of cruelty practised by those amongst whom we live unrecognized by the law, and which the law has so far never punished. Brand made this woman’s life a martyrdom; her every action was thwarted, and every pleasure arrested midway towards its fulfilment. In time her spirit broke. She lived with him because she could never break away; unluckily for her, she had none of that special knowledge which enables a better educated woman to make her own way in the world, and defy those enemies of the household who can be the most bitter and unyielding. Marian Brand was found in bed one morning dead, with a broken bottle of chloral at her side. Brand was the first to break into the room. Accustomed to come down late he had missed his sister’s usual preparations for his comfort. The frightened servants at his heels never saw him pick up a letter addressed to himself which lay upon the bed, and which he presently destroyed. But trustees who benefit by certain deaths under a will must needs go warily, and facts like these leak out in time, however carefully concealed. Brand, pleasantly aware of the world’s forgetfulness found it advisable to travel abroad for a while. It was not, indeed, until after his marriage that he was again universally received. Even now he was only allowed access to the houses where Evelyn was a popular guest because from the first she had refused all invitations which did not include him. The position galled him, although he made the best of it; he had aged of late years, his limp becoming daily more prominent, and the stoop from the shoulders stiffening with time. Evelyn herself seldom looked back or forward, but to-night, for some unknown reason, as she sat in the dusk by the open window, a tide of memory swept her along to the shore of her youth. Past days of dreams and personal ambitions—how far she had drifted from them lately! The red and black days which marked special epochs, beginning with her childhood in the convent and ending with her marriage, came before her in a series of pictures. She looked at her dead youth, and felt anew the shocks that killed it.