The group in the room sat in silence with an air of stiff expectation.  The members of the family knew they were not assembled to pay respect to the memory of the woman who had just been buried.  Her husband had regarded her as a drag upon him, and did not consider her removal an occasion for the display of hypocritical grief.  Rather was it to be regarded as an act of timely intervention on the part of Death, who for once had not acted as marplot in human affairs.

They were there to listen to the story of the triumph of the head of the family, Robert Turold.  Most families have some common source of interest and pride.  It may be a famous son, a renowned ancestor, a faded heirloom, even a musical daughter.  The pride of the Turold family rested on the belief that they were of noble blood—­the lineal inheritors of a great English title which had fallen into abeyance hundreds of years before.

Robert Turold had not been content to boast of his nobility and die a commoner like his father and grandfather before him.  His intense pride demanded more than that.  As a boy he had pored over the crabbed parchments in the family deed-box which indicated but did not record the family descent, and he had vowed to devote his life to prove the descent and restore the ancient title of Turrald of Missenden to the Turolds of which he was the head.

There was not much to go upon when he commenced the labour of thirty years—­merely a few old documents, a family tradition, and the similarity of name.  And the Turolds were poor.  Money, and a great deal of it, was needed for the search, in the first instance, of the unbroken line of descent, and for the maintenance of the title afterwards if the claim was completely established.  But Robert Turold was not to be deterred by obstacles, however great.  He was a man with a single idea, and such men are hard to baulk in the long run.

He left England in early manhood and remained away for some years.  His family understood that he had gone to seek a fortune in the wilds of the earth.  He reappeared—­a saturnine silent man—­as suddenly as he had gone away.  In his wanderings he had gained a fortune but partly lost the use of one eye.  The partial loss of an eye did not matter much in a country like England, where most people have two eyes and very little money, and therefore pay more respect to wealth than vision.

Robert Turold invested his money, and then set to work upon his great ambition with the fierce restlessness which characterized all his proceedings in life.  He married shortly after his return.  He soon came to the conclusion that his marriage was a great mistake—­the greatest mistake of his life.  His wife had borne him two girls.  The first died in infancy, and some years later Sisily was born.  His regrets increased with the birth of a second daughter.  He wanted a son to succeed him in the title—­when he gained it.  Time passed, and he became enraged.  His anger crushed the timid woman who shared his strange lot.  His dominating temperament and moody pride were too much for her gentle soul.  She became desperately afraid of him and his stern ways, of that monomania which kept them wandering through the country searching for links in a [pedigree] which had to be traced back for hundreds of years before Robert Turold could grasp his heart’s desire.