He went on to speak of Gloria’s childhood, and the unhappy time when they had to part with her. “It was one of the greatest griefs of our life,” he said in his simple, straightforward way. “But there was no help for it. We had the best medical advice, and the verdict was unanimous, she could not live in the East. My other child, a son, has thrived there--difference of constitution, of course.” He paused a moment, before resuming this portion of his daughter’s history, a good deal of which the young man had gathered from his sweetheart. “Just to go back a moment. Howard and I had not been very attached brothers in our youth, I should hesitate to say with whom the fault lay. Enough that with regard to most things we did not see eye to eye.” Jasper Stormont did not say what those things were. And Lydon, dearly as he would have liked to know, did not think it seemly to ask him. “But we kept up a rather desultory, if brief correspondence. When this trouble came upon us, I wrote to him in an agony of spirit as it were, telling him that we had to part with one of our beloved children. In writing that letter, I had no ulterior motive in my mind. From what I knew of my brother’s character, I should have considered him the last man in the world to consider anything but his own comfort, to disturb the mode of life which he had mapped out for himself.” Lydon gathered this much from those words: namely, that Howard Stormont was judged to be, in reality, a selfish creature, who lived for himself, who only studied himself. “To my intense surprise, I received an answer which caused me to take a totally different view of him. He wrote me that having remained a bachelor so long, there was practically no chance of his exchanging his estate. He had prospered greatly in the world; he lived with our widowed sister, Maud Barnard, who had a small income of her own. The house was at times a bit dull; he thought it would be brightened by the presence of a child, in whom they could take an interest and find an object of affection. He offered to adopt Gloria, and make her welfare his solemn charge. Anyway, let the experiment be tried, for say a couple of years. If, at the end of that time, Gloria found she was not happy, her father could make other arrangements.” Jasper Stormont paused a little time before he resumed. “But, fortunately, that did not happen. They spoiled the girl from the day she went into her new home, and the spoiling has gone on, but I think I can say my dear girl is none the worse for it. And now, my dear Leonard, I come to a somewhat delicate topic.” “I think I can guess the nature of it,” interjected Lydon.