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The home of Francis Ribblestone lay in park and garden between Valewood and Valewood Ho, a mile or so beyond the town of Haslemere.

The present Manor House had been built in the time of the first Charles; but there remained some portions of the older building, a Tudor keep and chapel, for the Ribblestones had been Romanists even after the Reformation.

This chapel, a circular building at the back of the square house, with an outside staircase and independent entry, was now used as a picture gallery, and the old keep contained a collection of famous arms and armour.

The Manor House stood flat on a great lawn, broken by cypress trees and foreign shrubs and bounded by a stream that wandered away into the park land. In front was a low terrace flagged with marble, to the back a sunk Dutch garden; the lawn was cut by the drive and the terrace broken by a shallow flight of steps. Formerly the entrance had been upon the other side, as a fine avenue of trees there still remained to prove; but in rebuilding, the plan of the grounds had been altered.

The house itself was of finely moulded brick, with beautiful chimney stacks and lead gutters and pipes richly decorated. It was very large; it had been, indeed, too large for the Ribblestones, who had lived in it since its rebuilding, but they had always filled it with servants after a lavish manner; even during the Rebellion the then Sir Francis had kept thirty men and women in the Manor House; and the present Sir Francis, who neither entertained nor lived in any way extravagantly, maintained fifty indoor and fifty outdoor servants. This had always been the way of the Ribblestones, a prudent, almost austere race, to live on their own land in quiet magnificence; their wealth had never been squandered, and now was considerable, being spent, as always, on the land from which it came, and on this domestic state.

Francis Ribblestone had been in possession twenty years and had altered nothing; all was as in his father's day, and as long as he could himself remember.

In this house he had been born and educated, first under his father's eye, then under that of his guardian; from here he had left for his three years' travel of Europe, and to this house returned his own master; he had never known another life than that continued within the scope of his own lands, and never wished for another.

His mother he could not remember, his father scarcely recall; a year after the death of his first wife the late Sir Francis had married again, a French lady of rank who had never been beloved by her husband's people.

Her reign as mistress of the Manor was short; she and her lord died of smallpox within the same week, leaving a delicate child, five years younger than Francis, to be taken care of by his French relatives, since he was totally unprovided for out of the estates.

His half-brother, who had received from his mother the fantastic name of Phoebus, was the sole relative Francis possessed and the sole cloud in the serene contentment of his life.

Phoebus Ribblestone had remained in France; his relatives there had bought him a commission in the Black Musketeers and he had taken up his residence in Paris; he never ceased to remember that his father had been a rich man and that he had not benefited by the fact to the extent of a penny.

Francis, to whom the memory of his father's second marriage was painful (in common with the men on his estate he fiercely resented the union of a Ribblestone and a foreigner), had twice paid the debts of his half-brother, whom he disliked and despised and yet whom, for his own pride's sake, he Must help for the common name they bore.

Beyond the fact of his existence and these two haughty demands for help out of difficulties into which his own recklessness had led him, Phoebus Ribblestone had not troubled his brother; since they were both children he had not seen him; years had passed before he first heard from him, and Some time had elapsed since his last letter.

As Francis Ribblestone rode home this evening after his talk with Mr. Bargrave, his half-brother was utterly out of his thoughts, and it was with unpleasant surprise that he saw a packet from France lying with some others on the mantelpiece of the dining-room.

He put them all aside with a little gesture of impatience, and sat down to his dinner in a silent mood.

He dined with his steward, his chaplain, his secretary, and his doctor, all middle-aged men who had held these positions in his father's time, the first able in the dispatch of his duties, the other three clever in concealing their lack of any duties. Francis Ribblestone accepted them as he accepted the room itself, with the moulded ceiling and Mortlake tapestries, the Spanish leather chairs and the windows of painted glass; he did not find them dull or tiresome because, when he wished, he ignored them, and they were trained to perfect discretion, being in spirit, if not in name, his servants.

To-night they followed his humour and were silent also; each one inwardly attributed the reserve of Sir Francis to that unwelcome letter from France.

Presently the young man spoke, and on a subject that came as a surprise to his attuned audience.

"Pray, Dr. Burton," he said, with the ceremonious mode of address he always used to his dependents, "do you know anything of Fowkes—Samuel Fowkes and his daughter who have the house by the yew tree?"

"His granddaughter, Sir Francis," returned the doctor. "I have heard of them, yes."

"Ah, his granddaughter. A doctor, is he not?"

"He was, I believe, Sir Francis, but hath retired now."

"They come from London?"

"Yes, I think so, Sir Francis."

Francis Ribblestone, leaning back in his stiff chair at the head of the great table half in shadow, was observed to smile.

"You are very discreet, sir," he said. "These people have been in Haslemere six months and you know no more about them! Fie, I took you for a better gossip. I am interested in the girl," he added frankly; "she is a beauty. Why did she come here? It must be dull in Haslemere for a creature like that."

The steward answered.

"I think she came, Sir Francis, because her poverty knew no choice; the old man sold his poor practice and retired to finish some book on medicine it hath been the hope of his life to complete, and she, I take it, had to accompany him or go homeless."

"A strange couple," remarked Sir Francis. "I often meet her in the woods or on the heath. She hath a wild look at times; the old man must be sour company. They have no money, you say, sir?"

"Very little, Sir Francis; they have already made a difficulty about the rent."

"Leave the rent. I think I know a good man who would marry Serena Fowkes—Holt, of Langley's farm. Cannot we play Providence, Dr. Burton? If money is in the way, we could find him something to do on the estate."

A faint veiled glance passed between the four men that Francis Ribblestone was too utterly unconscious to notice.

The doctor spoke in a voice almost unnaturally expressionless.

"What maketh you think she favoureth young Holt, Sir Francis?"

Francis Ribblestone gave him an absent look, as if his thoughts had already flown wide, then answered:

"Ah—I have seen them together."

The subject dropped; later, when he sat alone in the library, Francis Ribblestone, again reading the note that had been tossed him from the house behind the yew, recurred to it in his thoughts.

He was too much in love with the world to pity anyone who was alive and young, yet he felt vaguely sorry for Serena Fowkes and vaguely desirous of abetting her condition.

He reflected now that, when he was married, Margaret could do something for her; he wished she would marry Holt of Langley, and would like to pay her dowry.

He had been first moved to think of her at all by her difference from anyone who had before crossed his path; she came from mystery; he did not know what her parents had been, hardly her estate; he accepted her as a gentlewoman, yet could contemplate her as the wife of a yeoman farmer.

His first meeting with her had been among the heather of Boundless Copse; she had spoken first and he had been glad to respond. Since then he had been to her home and met her several times in the woods and lanes, when she had walked by his bridle a little way, or talked to him while he paused his horse to listen.

The restrained passion of discontent in her manner had moved him to ask her and Dr. Fowkes once to the Manor House, with the sole idea of giving her pleasure. The old man did not go, but Serena brought with her her cousin, then staying with them, a pale girl, called Patience Coventry, whom Francis Ribblestone viewed with a faint dislike.

He recalled with some tenderness the startled joy of the London girl over the rich beauties of the Manor, her breathless exclaim, her obvious delight, and his heart softened towards the artless note he held in his hand; a note which at first had roused the quick pride of the great gentleman accustomed to no touch of familiarity from his inferiors.

Now he cast it, not unkindly, on to the smouldering logs and took his letters from his pocket.

All save one were put aside; that from Paris he opened slowly and read with frowning eyes.

Phoebus Ribblestone wrote in his usual lofty strain, but with a more open statement of his case than he had so far used.

He repeated the grievance of the difference between his fortunes and those of his half-brother, and added that had his father not died so suddenly he would have been liberally provided for out of the estates Francis was now enjoying (a contention the justice of which the baronet's good sense admitted), and that in consideration of this he expected Sir Francis to make him an allowance, and he named a handsome sum, adding that he was again considerably in debt (Mon Dieu! what can a gentleman do on the pay of a lieutenant?), and wished for money to buy a captain's commission.

The heart of Francis Ribblestone hardened. The letter seemed mere studied insolence; Phoebus was intolerable, he thought, and a sense of hate ran through his veins. The letter was dashed down, and Sir Francis rose to pace the long shining floor, on which the candles in the sconces made long reflections of light.

For his own unmixed blood, the son of his own mother, he would have done anything, but towards this child of a woman never loved in Haslemere, a foreigner, a stranger, he felt no obligation. The fellow was clearly worthless, his French relations were tired of helping him, neither shame nor pride appeared in his letters. Sir Francis grudged him the name it seemed he was doing his utmost to disgrace with wanton follies, the name that was the one tie between them, and that he, the elder, of the finer breed, meant to make famous, a power at the councils of the kingdom.

He reflected, angrily, that he was not so rich as Phoebus appeared to believe; wealthy he certainly was, but in the public life he was about to undertake he would need every penny of his fortune. It never occurred to him to cease expenditure on the land, and his wife would cost him more than she brought him; to help Phoebus, therefore, would mean to stint himself in his personal splendours, and he dismissed the idea as humiliating.

On the impulse of anger he returned to the desk, his young brow clouded, and wrote such an answer to Phoebus Ribblestone as he hoped would prevent his half-brother from ever seeking to communicate with him again.

When he had finished the letter he rose, yawning; he was suddenly tired, vexed with himself, his brilliant humour spoilt.

The dark room, lit by the fire and candle-light, but still full of shadows, richly half revealed his slightly drooping figure as he leant against the mantelpiece.

His hair had become loosened, his cheek was flushed; he had the half-wild look of youth dreaming unespied,—youth, slipped free of trammels and communing with itself for a space. Before he was aware his thoughts had turned back to his childhood: suddenly he saw his father's face, so like his own, looking down upon this same hearth, and remembered the awe which he had looked up into the dark countenance.

"If my father had lived—" so Phoebus wrote, and the powerlessness of the dead gave Francis a swift pang—to take advantage of that awful powerlessness—was it any better than cowardice?...

With something of a shudder, he turned, caught up his letter to his half-brother, and cast it on top of the shrivelled scroll of Serena Fowkes' poor words.

"How dare I hate my father's son?" he whispered; his wrath was dead and seemed now like blasphemy to his heritage.

He wrote a draft to his bankers, sealed it up with a few words studiously courteous, and leant back with a little sleepy smile of satisfaction that he had risen equal to the obligations imposed on him, who bore the name of Francis Ribblestone.