Hall.

The Reverend Martin Bedel, the then vicar of Golden Friars, a stout
short man, with a mulberry-coloured face and small gray eyes, and
taciturn habits, called and entered the drawing-room at Mardykes Hall,
with his fat and garrulous wife on his arm.

The drawing-room has a great projecting Tudor window looking out on the
lake, with its magnificent background of furrowed and purple mountains.

Sir Bale was not there, and Mrs. Bedel examined the pictures, and
ornaments, and the books, making such remarks as she saw fit; and then
she looked out of the window, and admired the prospect. She wished to
stand well with the Baronet, and was in a mood to praise everything.

You may suppose she was curious to see him, having heard for years such
strange tales of his doings.

She expected the hero of a brilliant and wicked romance; and listened
for the step of the truant Lovelace who was to fulfil her idea of manly
beauty and fascination.

She sustained a slight shock when he did appear.

Sir Bale Mardykes was, as she might easily have remembered, a
middle-aged man--and he looked it. He was not even an imposing-looking
man for his time of life: he was of about the middle height, slightly
made, and dark featured. She had expected something of the gaiety and
animation of Versailles, and an evident cultivation of the art of
pleasing. What she did see was a remarkable gravity, not to say gloom,