I will tell you of one who did not consider so.  And that was the widow of Sir Lionel Verner.  When she arrived from India with her other two children, a son and daughter, she found old Mr. Verner dead, and Stephen the inheritor.  Deeply annoyed and disappointed, Lady Verner deemed that a crying wrong had been perpetrated upon her and hers.  But she had no power to undo it.

Stephen Verner had strictly fulfilled his father’s injunctions touching young Lionel.  He brought up the boy as his heir.  During his educational days at Eton and at college, Verner’s Pride was his holiday home, and he subsequently took up his permanent residence at it.  Stephen Verner, though long married, had no children.  One daughter had been born to him years ago, but had died at three or four years old.  His wife had died a very short while subsequent to the death of his father.  He afterwards married again, a widow lady of the name of Massingbird, who had two nearly grown-up sons.  She had brought her sons home with her to Verner’s Pride, and they had made it their home since.

Mr. Verner kept it no secret that his nephew Lionel was to be his heir; and, as such, Lionel was universally regarded on the estate.  “Always provided that you merit it,” Mr. Verner would say to Lionel in private; and so he had said to him from the very first.  “Be what you ought to be—­what I fondly believe my brother Lionel was:  a man of goodness, of honour, of Christian integrity; a gentleman in the highest acceptation of the term—­and Verner’s Pride shall undoubtedly be yours.  But if I find you forget your fair conduct, and forfeit the esteem of good men, so surely will I leave it away from you.”

And that is the introduction.  And now we must go back to the golden light of that spring evening.

Ascending the broad flight of steps and crossing the terrace, the house door is entered.  A spacious hall, paved with delicately-grained marble, its windows mellowed by the soft tints of stained glass, whose pervading hues are of rose and violet, gives entrance to reception rooms on either side.  Those on the right hand are mostly reserved for state occasions; those on the left are dedicated to common use.  All these rooms are just now empty of living occupants, save one.  That one is a small room on the right, behind the two grand drawing-rooms, and it looks out on the side of the house towards the south.  It is called “Mr. Verner’s study.”  And there sits Mr. Verner himself in it, leaning back in his chair and reading.  A large fire burns in the grate, and he is close to it:  he is always chilly.

Ay, always chilly.  For Mr. Verner’s last illness—­at least, what will in all probability prove his last, his ending—­has already laid hold of him.  One generation passes away after another.  It seems but the other day that a last illness seized upon his father, and now it is his turn:  but several years have elapsed since then.  Mr. Verner is not sixty, and he thinks that age is young