THE AUTHOR.




VELLENAUX.




CHAPTER I.


The bright rays of an Autumn sun fell upon the richly stained glass,
sending a flood of soft, mellow rainbow tinted light through the
quaintly curved and deeply mullioned windows which adorned a portion of
the eastern wing of that grand old Baronial residence, Vellenaux, on a
fine September morning, at the period during which our story opens. This
handsome pile, now the property of Sir Jasper Coleman, had been erected
by one of his ancestors, Reginald De Coleman, during the reign of the
fifth Henry.

This gallant Knight had rendered that Monarch great service during his
wars in France, especially at Agincourt, where his skill and bravery was
so conspicuous, and used to so great advantage, that King Henry, on his
return to England, rewarded his faithful follower with a grant of land
in Devonshire, on which he was enabled, with the spoils he had acquired
and the ransoms received from his French prisoners of note, to erect a
magnificent chateaux, which he called Vellenaux, after Francois, Count
De Vellenaux, a French noble, whose ransom contributed largely to its