He had married her mother for love (like many another man, he had never touched even the fringe of romance till he was past his fortieth year), whereas he had married his first wife for her dowry. Thanks to certain arrangements made by his mother, Felix was in a measure independent of his father even before he became of age. About three years prior to the colonel's death a terrible mischance befell his daughter, at that time in her tenth year. It was Christmas week, at which season a certain amount of license is often winked at among the servants in country houses. In the dusk of afternoon, and in the gallery at the head of the stairs, Anna encountered what she took for an apparition, but which, in point of fact, was merely one of the servants dressed up in a sheet, and having her face whitened, on her way to join in some mummeries below stairs. The child, who from her birth had been of a highly excitable temperament, with hysterical tendencies, gave one piercing scream, and fell to the ground in a fit, which was followed by several others, and for some days her life was despaired of. Gradually, however, she regained her health, and everybody hoped--her father, of course, most of all--that the shock her system had undergone had left no ill effects behind it. One of the colonel's first acts after his daughter's seizure had been to send for Mrs. Jenwyn, with whose services, only a little while before, he had seen fit to dispense. It was Mrs. Jenwyn who had nursed his wife through the long illness which had preceded her death, and it was in fulfilment of Mrs. Drelincourt's dying request that he had installed her in the dual position of nurse and governess to his motherless girl, who, in the course of time, had learned to love her almost, if not quite, as well as the parent she had lost. Whether it was a feeling of jealousy that his child should care so much for any one but himself, or some other whim, which caused him to give Mrs. Jenwyn notice to leave, was known only to himself. In any case, Anna took the separation greatly to heart, far more so than her father was aware of, for the child's deepest moods were silent ones; of what she felt most she talked least, and the colonel was not skilled in reading below the surface. Now, however, he blamed himself with undue severity for having sent Mrs. Jenwyn about her business. Again and again he told himself, most unreasonably, that had she been on the spot the mischance would never have happened. It was some consolation to him to witness the naïve and touching delight with which Anna welcomed Mrs. Jenwyn's return. For all that, as he quitted the room, leaving them together, he could not help saying to himself, with a touch of bitterness, "She loves that woman better than she loves me."