It is not every mother who loves her ugly duckling better than the handsome ones. Mrs. Bradby took more pride in her other sons than in Maurice, who, until he had made his new start at Abington, had been looked on in his home as something of a failure. Even now, though his new start had seemed to promise success, neither his father nor mother had taken it as anything more than a fortunate finding of the right path for him. There was indeed no more to be seen in it than that. Land Agency is hardly a career in itself. At the best he would live the life that suited him, and gain in time a situation which would enable him to marry. He could never expect more than a modest income and a modest home. He would bring satisfaction to his parents if he worked up to that, but not pride, as their other sons were in the way of doing. But this beautiful, sweet, clever girl saw a great deal beneath the not very attractive exterior. He might do nothing in the world that would be counted as success. He was hardly in the way of doing anything, and yet she spoke of what he was doing as if it went much deeper than the work in which he was spending his days, and by which he was about to earn his living. He was in his right place in the world, and in tune with big things. This was more than to make the sort of success that his brothers might make in their several careers. If his mother did not think it was more, she at least saw that Maurice was not to be judged by the standards applied to them, and her heart went out to the girl who had found more in him than she had. It may be supposed that she was on the alert for any sign that Caroline was attracted towards her son in the way that she had divined he was towards her. She was not sure, at the end of her visit that she wasn't; but she was sure that if she was she didn't know it yet, or she would not have spoken of him with that unfettered admiration for his fine qualities. It was natural that she should show warmth of feeling towards him, when he was lying battered and broken by having saved her from the same or from worse injury; but that warmth also was expressed frankly and without reserve. His mother thought, rather sadly, that if Caroline had thought of him as of a young man with whom it was possible to fall in love, she wouldn't have praised him so freely. She was what her surroundings had made her; he was something quite different. She would accept the difference as putting a barrier between them, and from behind that barrier she could give him her liking and admiration and understanding.