"These are strokes of fate not to be avoided, and love, which unites, sometimes severs. It severed me and my brother, and neither he nor I, nor your mother, Nansie, was to blame for it. In youth we had a great affection for each other, although our characters were dissimilar. Our father was a poor gentleman--our family boat never floated into a golden stream--and he gave us as good an education as we could have gained in schools And colleges. He had a taste for books, and he cultivated the taste in us, his only children. He had ideas, too, and to be in his company was an entertainment. When he died he left each of us a little money, not more than a hundred pounds apiece, with which we were to seek our fortunes. We remained together, and in this association we became acquainted with your mother. By that time I had grown into a dreamer, and, I am afraid, a vagrant; your uncle was a dreamer also, but his visions were not entirely Utopian, and he was less of a Bohemian than I. He loved your mother passionately, and by force of fate we were rivals. We both tried our fortunes with her; it was not a case of one supplanting the other, but fair play on both sides; he failed and I succeeded. Your mother was a sweet and beautiful lady, and how I won her I know not." "Father," whispered Nansie, "you have a silver tongue and the heart of a man. That is how you won my mother." "Well, well, child, I should be past these flatteries, but as you said of yourself a while ago, I am human. My brother, learning that he had lost what he would have given the world to gain, cut himself adrift from us. He would not listen to reason, and I do not wonder at it. When was love really reasonable? What he did he did with determination, and all my implorings could not move him. He vowed that he and I should evermore be strangers, and so departed, and from that day we have not met. After my marriage I wrote to him from time to time, but he never replied to one of my letters. It was only when you and your mother returned from the visit you paid him that I learned he kept a bookshop in the East of London. I see his handwriting now for the first time in twenty years. Your mother and I constantly spoke about him; he possessed many admirable qualities; but, were I pushed to it, I should find it very difficult to say into what kind of a man he would grow, except that he would be constant and steadfast in his opinions. It was in the hope that he would soften towards me that, when you were a child, I sent you with your mother to see him. I see you now as you recalled yourself, in your little, white dress and blue sash, with the bunch of flowers you were to present to him. These are a part of a woman's innocently cunning ways, and I know it was in your dear mother's heart that, through you, your uncle should be won over to us. But the hopes in which we indulged were not realized. Your uncle was true to his word. It used to be said of him as a boy that he