_I.--I Meet Diana Vernon_


Early in the eighteenth century, when I, Frank Osbaldistone, was a youth
of twenty, I was hastily summoned from Bordeaux, where, in a mercantile
house, I was, as my father trusted, being initiated into the mysteries
of commerce. As a matter of fact, my principal attention had been
dedicated to literature and manly exercises.

In an evil hour, my father had received my letter, containing my
eloquent and detailed apology for declining a place in the firm, and I
was summoned home in all haste, his chief ambition being that I should
succeed, not merely to his fortune, but to the views and plans by which
he imagined he could extend and perpetuate that wealthy inheritance. I
did not understand how deeply my father's happiness was involved, and
with something of his own pertinacity, had formed a determination
precisely contrary, not conceiving that I should increase my own
happiness by augmenting a fortune which I believed already sufficient.

My father cut the matter short; when he was my age, his father had
turned him out, and settled his legal inheritance on his younger
brother; and one of that brother's sons should take my place, if I
crossed him any further.

At the end of the month he gave me to think the matter over, I found
myself on the road to York, on a reasonably good horse, with fifty
guineas in my pocket, travelling, as it would seem, for the purpose of
assisting in the adoption of a successor to myself in my father's house
and favour; he having decided that I should pay a visit to my uncle, and
stay at Osbaldistone Hall, till I should receive further instructions.