Not that Mrs. Ward minded. She characterized the women as frumps and the men as fools, and, having enough to live on comfortably, set up a house in Curzon Street. It was thought that she would marry again; and probably she would have done so had a sufficiently rich husband with a title been forthcoming. But somehow no one worth capturing ever came Mrs. Ward's way, and as time went on she chose to assume the role of a devoted mother, and--as she phrased it--to live again in her daughter. This was quite wrong, as Dorothy Ward was a slim, serious-minded girl of nineteen, not given to gayety, and was one who was anxious to marry a husband with mind rather than with money. How frivolous little Mrs. Ward came to have such a Puritan daughter no one ever could make out. She resembled her mother neither in face, nor in manner, nor in tastes. Mrs. Ward openly lamented that Dorothy was such a difficult girl to manage, which meant that Dorothy had refused several good matches, and had declined to be guided entirely by her mother's opinion. When the Earl of Summerslea proposed and was not accepted, Mrs. Ward was furious, but Dorothy said steadily that she would never marry a brute with a title. "You'll marry any one I choose," said Mrs. Ward when the two were discussing the matter. "Certainly not Lord Summerslea," rejoined Dorothy, steadily. "And certainly not that penniless George Brendon," retorted her mother. "You shall not throw yourself away on him." "He is a good man and a clever man, and a man whom any woman might be proud of winning, mother." "And a man with no money and no position. Who is he? What is his family? No one ever heard of him." "They will one day, when he becomes famous." "Oh, as a writing-person. As though any one cared two pins about that sort of thing. I want to see you a countess." "You shall never see me the Countess of Summerslea. I know all about that man. He is bad and dissipated." "O Lord! as if that mattered," cried Mrs. Ward with supreme contempt. "Your father was the same, yet we got on all right." "I am sure you did," said Dorothy, with bitter meaning, upon which Mrs. Ward showed her claws. Her friends called her a kitten, but she was a cat in reality and could scratch on occasions. But all her scratching could not make Dorothy Lady Summerslea. Hating Brendon, and knowing that her daughter liked him, it was supposed by Mrs. Ward's friends that the young man would be sent to the right-about, and that Dorothy would be kept out of his way. But Mrs. Ward knew her daughter too well to take such a disastrous course.