"Dear Patricia," she wrote,
"I have read with pain and surprise your letter. What your poor dear father would have thought I cannot conceive.
"What I did was done from the best motives, as I felt you were compromising yourself by a secret engagement.
"I am sorry to find that you have become exceedingly self-willed of late, and I fear London has done you no good.
"As your sole surviving relative, it is my duty to look after your welfare. This I promised your dear father on his death-bed.
"Gratitude I do not ask, nor do I expect it; but I am determined to do my duty by my brother's child. I cannot but deplore the tone in which you last wrote to me, and also the rather foolish threat that your letter contained.
Your affectionate aunt,
"P.S.—I shall make a point of coming up to London soon. Even your rudeness will not prevent me from doing my duty by my brother's child.—A. B."
As she tore up the letter, Patricia remembered her father once saying, "Your aunt's sense of duty is the most offensive sense I have ever encountered."
One day as Patricia was endeavouring to sort out into some sort of coherence a sheaf of notes
