Instead of the usual sneering tone in which John Sandford addressed his sister, she was startled out of herself by hearing him speak with civility. The surprise gave her a brilliant glow, which touched her face with colour and lightened it up. Mr. Dorriman thought her lovely. Her gentle helplessness was another great attraction, an attraction which every day's acquaintance increased. Without fully understanding how it all came about she found herself Mrs. Dorriman, and content to be so and to get away from the roughness and unkindness which was all that she ever knew of the brotherly tie. At first she had not been unhappy. Mr. Dorriman was so fond of her and so carefully surrounded her with comforts and kindness that she was more than content, though she was not in the least in love with him. But soon shadows came. A man of some property, he was unfortunately surrounded by men of wealth. He argued that where those round him made gigantic fortunes he could do the same--putting upon one side the important fact that they had been trained to business and he had not. He plunged into every opening where he thought he saw a chance of success; losses only made him more certain of success in a new direction. He was upright, honourable, and kind-hearted to a fault. He knew really nothing of business, and imagined that in a few days he could master details other men had spent their whole lives in studying--and in this idea John Sandford confirmed him. After seven years of anxieties, and hopes, and fears, he found himself ruined in health from over-worry, broken in fortune, and not able to shield his wife from the consequences. That she had never loved him he knew and had long known. But he had learned from her something of her life and of the absence of happiness which had made her what she was. He also had many a score against John Sandford could he but live to pay them. There was much in the transactions between them he could not understand, and which, looking back upon now by the light of his failures, quite apart from his own speculations, he was certain, he had reason to know, had not been fair or right. But this conviction came to him too late; before he had done more than collect notes and tabulate letters he was struck down by fever, which his constitution could not stand, and Mrs. Dorriman found herself at twenty-five a widow, at the mercy of the world and her brother. This little place of Inchbrae had been bought by her husband for her when he found how much the sea entered into her thoughts and how she loved it, and he went there to die, leaving her, he thought, a home, and a home she liked. Mrs. Dorriman, however, after thinking that all was not lost, so she had it, only learned afterwards that she was there as a tenant at will; the place was hers, but all else had passed into her brother's hands in virtue of some claim he had on her husband's property, and she had not a penny!