she said.

'Your first duty is to your father.

know you had the slightest hesitation about it.

Don't ever let him

I shall miss you

of course; but think how lonely his life has been for the last ten years.'

'But you are not well. You ought not to be left alone.' Aunt Madge smiled. 'I can take care of myself, and Power will take care of me. I might live for twenty or thirty years. You could not stay with me indefinitely because I am not perfectly well.'

A few weeks later Helen had said good-bye and sailed for India, and Aunt Madge had settled down in a tiny house at Torquay, where she had been advised to go. It was a very tiny house, for she was troubled at being a burden on her brother; and it was lonely. Her sister had died long before, leaving only two sons, who had grown up anything but agreeable. Their father was a rough, rather coarse-bred man; and they seemed to have taken after him entirely. There was nothing of the Treveryan in them. In the old times they had come once or twice to Laneithin; but they were not nice boys, and Aunt Madge did not think them good companions for Helen. There was no one else belonging to the family.

However, Aunt Madge had not long to endure her solitude. She began to lose strength fast. She seemed to feel that her work was over; and though she was brave and cheerful to the end, she had no wish to live. A year after Helen left her she was gone.

It was not until then that they knew how ill she had been. She would never let Power tell them; and her last letter was as beautifully written as ever, and as full of brightness and interest in their doings. She died as she had lived, thinking of others. It was one of those lives which are so hard to understand. As a girl Margaret Treveryan seemed to have been given everything which could make life sweet: beauty, talent, education, charm of manner, a true warm heart. Then, at two-and-twenty, the man she loved was taken from her by a miserable accident; and from that time she never seemed to think of herself. In making others happy she found contentment; but it seemed a waste somehow, a waste of love and beauty, and capacity for happiness.

In the meantime Helen had settled down in her Indian home. Colonel Treveryan was now in a prominent position, and she had to manage his house for him. It was difficult work at first, while everything was strange to her; but she soon learnt enough

CHAPTER III

THE LANGLEYS OF WRENTHAM

THE Langleys of Wrentham Hall in the county of Warwick were a good old family, with some reason to be proud of themselves. They were not the original occupants of the Hall, which, like most of our English country houses, had changed hands more than once. The Langleys bought it from a family of the name of Blunt, who were ruined, like many others, in the disgraceful days of Charles the Second; when the Dutch were burning our ships in the Thames, and Society was gambling and drinking at Whitehall. John Langley, the first of the name at Wrentham, was a London merchant, who had made a fortune in the Eastern trade, and had been knighted by the King in return for a loan of which nothing was ever more heard. Sir John rebuilt the Hall, which was then a picturesque Elizabethan house, or rather he added to it. The original house was left standing, but the court and subsidiary buildings were cleared away from the front, and in their place arose a lofty façade of stone, with narrow windows and pointed gables. From this block two wings were carried backwards to meet the projecting wings of the old house, and the whole building thus assumed the shape of a square, the original porch and front looking across a flagged courtyard into the back of the new block. Taking a hint from what he had found at Wrentham, Sir John then threw out a stone portico in front of his new main door, and a walled court in front of the portico. A panel in the great stone gateway bore the representation of a chained leopard instead of the bull's head of the Blunts, which was relegated to a smaller gateway on the right of the court, leading into the garden. The stables were rebuilt just outside the court, also to the right, an iron gateway giving access from the court to the stable-yard. Sir John Langley had been struck

by the hall of the old house, with its mullioned windows and high oak panelling, and this he determined to reproduce. His new front door was therefore made to open into a large panelled hall, at one end of which was a wide fireplace of the ancient type, and at the other end a broad oak stair leading to the rooms above. For the sake of warmth the front door was covered by a small inner porch or anteroom, which projected into the hall, breaking the stiff outline of the walls and forming two pleasant recesses to right and left of the entrance. From each of these recesses a broad carved window with cushioned seats looked out upon the court.

A walled garden lay to the right of the house, sloping gently towards a stream a hundred paces distant. This stream turned in its course a little lower down, and the road leading from the Hall to the village of Wrentham crossed it by a massive stone bridge.

After the time of Sir John, Wrentham remained substantially unchanged. The walls became mellowed in colouring, and covered in parts with lichen and moss and ivy; the oaken stairs and panelling grew darker and darker; the garden-wall was levelled, and the old enclosed garden gave place to a smooth sloping lawn dotted with fine trees; while flower-beds and shady walks and hothouses gradually grew into being beyond the stream; finally, a considerable extent of country round the house was enclosed and turned into a park, full of grassy mounds and grand old trees and pleasant glades, which ran up into the bracken and underwood of the pheasant covers. But substantially the Hall remained as Sir John Langley had built it, only improved by the hand of Time, and the loving care of successive generations of occupants. As a specimen of architecture it was very far from perfect, and at times a stranger might have thought it somewhat gloomy; but in spring or summer, when the lawns were smooth and trim, and the flower-beds bright with colour, and the great oaks and beeches in their glory, a man would have been hard to please who could find fault with such a home. It was a thoroughly English house, such as no country but England can show, and fit to be the cradle of a sturdy English race.

The Langleys were worthy of their birthplace. They could not boast of a chivalrous descent, and they had made no great mark in history; but they had given to their country a fair number of stout soldiers and honest country gentlemen, and in

C

their own part of England their name stood high. At the same time the family was not wealthy. Since the days of Sir John the Langleys had never made money, or largely increased their possessions by marriage. The younger sons had been obliged to seek their living all over the world, very much to their own advantage and that of the world as well.

That evening in September 1876, when the little Sunday party were sitting round Colonel Treveryan's table at Syntia, the sun was still bright in the English sky. It was one of those clear exquisite days of early autumn when the north wind brings with it a gentle warning of the dark days to come.

The Langleys were gathered about the open hall door in readiness for their usual Sunday ramble across the fields. They were a handsome family. Charles Langley, the master of the house, was fully sixty years of age, but he was still a man to be envied as he stood there among his sons, straight and broad-shouldered and powerful, with the clear eyes and fresh complexion which can only be kept by a healthy country life. His wife stood near him, a tall graceful woman, with a determined face. Lady Mary Langley was the granddaughter of a successful lawyer, whose abilities had won him a peerage. His son, the second peer, had rendered some service to his party, and had been rewarded with an earldom. When he died in his turn he left behind him a son who succeeded to the title, and a daughter, Lady Mary, who inherited little in the way of money, but a large share of the pertinacity and rather imperious temper which had distinguished her father and grandfather.

When she married Charles Langley he was a Captain and Lieutenant-Colonel in the Guards, and one of the best-looking men in the service. She never rested until she induced him to leave the army, for which he was in some respects well fitted, and to enter upon a political career, for which, as he well knew, he was not fitted at all. She succeeded in getting him into the House, but there her success ended. He detested the life, and was beyond measure pleased when, after a couple of years of weary drudgery, he was beaten at the general election by a Radical candidate. Nothing would induce him to stand again ; it was, he said, worse than being in jail. There at least you got regular meals and a good night's rest; in the House you got neither. Lady Mary did her utmost to rouse him to a sense of what she described as his duty, but on this point he was immovable; and at last, with many secret tears of mortification and anger, she

was forced to recognise her defeat. She had spoilt a good soldier in Charles Langley, and she could make nothing else of him.

The two girls, Barbara and Evelyn, had much of their mother's gracefulness, but with more of the Langley type, the fair hair and blue eyes which were so common in the family pictures. They looked well in their trim gray ulsters and honest walkingboots; and they were thoroughly good girls, well mannered and sensible if not highly accomplished. Their brothers were like them and each other, though not cast in the same mould. Henry, the eldest, was a typical Langley in face and figure, with his father's broad shoulders and fair colouring. He had unfortu nately married when at Oxford a woman of humble extraction some years older than himself. Husband and wife were now separated, and there were no children of the marriage. It had been a severe blow to Lady Mary, who could have forgiven almost anything sooner than this; and poor Harry, who was a good fellow at bottom, found himself so uncomfortable at Wrentham that he did not care to come down very often. He lived by himself on his allowance, which was liberal, hunting a little and shooting a good deal, and getting through his time with tolerable satisfaction to himself and not much harm to any one else. Guy, the second son, of whom they were talking in India, had been three years in the army. There was perhaps a touch of swagger about his manner, which was, however, singularly pleasant and winning; and his tall clean-cut figure was topped by a wellshaped head and handsome face. He was like his mother; but his features, though regular, were not so determined in their expression. Guy was the best looking and cleverest of the Langleys, and the most popular with men and women. Finally, there was Roland, the youngest son, a good-looking young fellow too, but perhaps at that time the least attractive of the family. He was only a couple of years younger than Guy, but he had always been more or less delicate, and the difference seemed to be much greater. Roland had done better at school than either of his brothers, and had left Eton with a certain conceit about him which Oxford was not eradicating. Guy disapproved of the tone Roland had brought back from college; and expressed his disapproval with candour. 'Ro, you are an infernal young prig,' he said; 'you ought to go back to Jones's and get it swished out of you. I thought you would come to a bad end when you began to bring back all those beastly prizes. You won't do us any credit if you go on like this.' And Guy had set to work in a