claimed for it to its dominant position above the village rather
than to any feature of its own. Built of granite, like all the rest
of Gavrillac, though mellowed by some three centuries of existence,
it was a squat, flat-fronted edifice of two stories, each lighted by
four windows with external wooden shutters, and flanked at either end
by two square towers or pavilions under extinguisher roofs. Standing
well back in a garden, denuded now, but very pleasant in summer, and
immediately fronted by a fine sweep of balustraded terrace, it looked,
what indeed it was, and always had been, the residence of
unpretentious folk who found more interest in husbandry than in
adventure.

Quintin de Kercadiou, Lord of Gavrillac - Seigneur de Gavrillac was
all the vague title that he bore, as his forefathers had borne before
him, derived no man knew whence or how - confirmed the impression
that his house conveyed. Rude as the granite itself, he had never
sought the experience of courts, had not even taken service in the
armies of his King. He left it to his younger brother, Etienne, to
represent the family in those exalted spheres. His own interests
from earliest years had been centred in his woods and pastures. He
hunted, and he cultivated his acres, and superficially he appeared
to be little better than any of his rustic metayers. He kept no
state, or at least no state commensurate with his position or with
the tastes of his niece Aline de Kercadiou. Aline, having spent
some two years in the court atmosphere of Versailles under the aegis
of her uncle Etienne, had ideas very different from those of her
uncle Quintin of what was befitting seigneurial dignity. But though
this only child of a third Kercadiou had exercised, ever since she
was left an orphan at the early age of four, a tyrannical rule over
the Lord of Gavrillac, who had been father and mother to her, she