"During a visit to Riverscourt, shortly before the time appointed for her marriage to Uncle Falcon, then a comparatively poor man with no prospects--my mother met my father. My father fell in love with her, and my mother jilted Uncle Falcon in order to marry the young heir to the house and lands of Riverscourt. Poor mamma! How well I could understand it, remembering her love of luxury, and of all those things which go with an old country place and large estates. Uncle Falcon never spoke to her again, after receiving the letter in which she put an end to their engagement; but he had a furious scene with my grandfather, who had connived at the treachery toward his younger brother; and then horsewhipped the young subaltern, in his father's presence. "Shortly afterwards, he sailed for America, and never returned. "Then--oh, irony of fate! After three years of married life, the young heir died, without a son, and Uncle Falcon stood to inherit Riverscourt, as the last in the entail. "Meanwhile everything he touched had turned to gold, and he only waited my grandfather's decease to return as master to the old home, with the large fortune which would soon restore it to its pristine beauty and grandeur. "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.