She got to know them all at last by name--whole generations of them.
There was Sir Ralph in armour, and Bridget, his wife, in a ruff and a
farthingale; young Sir Maurice, who died in boyhood, and Sir Penrhyn, his
brother, in long love-locks and lace ruffles. A whole succession of Sir
Martins and Sir Henrys; then came the first Sir John and his wife in
powder and patches, with their fourteen children all in a row, whose
elaborate marriages and family histories, Vera, although assisted by Mrs.
Eccles, who had them all at her fingers' ends, had considerable
difficulty in clearly comprehending. It was a relief to be firmly landed
with Sir Maurice, in a sad-coloured suit and full-bottomed wig, "the
present baronet's grandfather," and, lastly, Sir John, "the present
baronet's father," in a deputy-lieutenant's scarlet uniform, with a
cocked hat under his arm--by far the worst and most inartistic painting
in the whole collection.

It was all wonderful and interesting to Vera. She elaborated whole
romances to herself out of these portraits. She settled their loves and
their temptations, heart-broken separations, and true lovers' meetings
between them. Each one had his or her history woven out of the slender
materials which Mrs. Eccles could give her of their real lives. Only one
thing disappointed her, there was no portrait of the present Sir John.
She would have liked to have seen what he was like, this man who was
unmarried still, and who had never cared to live in the house of his
fathers. She wondered what the mystery had been that kept him from it.
She could not understand that a man should deliberately prefer dark,
dirty, dingy London, which she had only once seen in passing from one
station to the other on her way to Sutton, to a life in this quiet
old-world red-brick house, with the rooks cawing among trees, and the
long chestnut glades stretching away into the park, and all the venerable