CHAPTER IV.
The following December, a day or two before Christmas, Mrs.Fellmer and her son were walking up and down the broad gravel path which bordered the east front of the house.

Till within the last half-hour the morning had been a drizzling one, and they had just emerged for a short turn before luncheon.
'You see, dear mother,' the son was saying, 'it is the peculiarity of my position which makes her appear to me in such a desirable light.

When you consider how I have been crippled at starting, how my life has been maimed; that I feel anything like publicity distasteful, that I have ye no political ambition, and that my chief aim and hope lie in the education of the little thing Annie has left me, you must see how desirable a wife like Miss Halborough would be, to prevent my becoming a mere vegetable.' 'If you adore her, I suppose you must have her!' replied his mother with dry indirectness.

'But you'll find that she will not be content to live on here as you do, giving her whole mind to a young child.' 'That's just where we differ.

Her very disqualification, that of being a nobody, as you call it, is her recommendation in my eyes.