complacency by circumstances. He had been disappointed in love as
a young man, and only married late in life. He had no son, and was
a widower--facts that, to his mind, quite dwarfed his good fortune
in every other respect. He held the comfortable doctrine that
things are always levelled up, and he honestly believed that he had
suffered as much sorrow and disappointment as any Lennox in the
history of the race.

His only child and her cousin, Henry Lennox, had been brought up
together and were of an age--both now twenty-six. The lad was
his uncle's heir, and would succeed to Chadlands and the title;
and it had been Sir Walter's hope that he and Mary might marry.
Nor had the youth any objection to such a plan. Indeed, he loved
Mary well enough; there was even thought to be a tacit
understanding between them, and they grew up in a friendship which
gradually became ardent on the man's part, though it never ripened
upon hers. But she knew that her father keenly desired this
marriage, and supposed that it would happen some day.

They were, however, not betrothed when the war burst upon Europe,
and Henry, then one-and-twenty, went from the Officers' Training
Corps to the Fifth Devons, while his cousin became attached to the
Red Cross and nursed at Plymouth. The accident terminated their
shadowy romance and brought real love into the woman's life, while
the man found his hopes at an end. He was drafted to Mesopotamia,
speedily fell sick of jaundice, was invalided to India, and, on
returning to the front, saw service against the Turks. But chance
willed that he won no distinction. He did his duty under dreary
circumstances, while to his hatred of war was added the weight of
his loss when he heard that Mary had fallen in love. He was an