saw him all in a glow of high fashion, of good looks,
of expensive habits, of charming ways with women.
He had for his own town residence a big house filled
with the spoils of travel and the trophies of the chase;
but it was to his country home, an old family place in Essex,
that he wished her immediately to proceed.

He had been left, by the death of their parents in India,
guardian to a small nephew and a small niece, children of a younger,
a military brother, whom he had lost two years before.
These children were, by the strangest of chances for a man
in his position--a lone man without the right sort of
experience or a grain of patience--very heavily on his hands.
It had all been a great worry and, on his own part doubtless,
a series of blunders, but he immensely pitied the poor chicks
and had done all he could; had in particular sent them
down to his other house, the proper place for them being
of course the country, and kept them there, from the first,
with the best people he could find to look after them,
parting even with his own servants to wait on them and going
down himself, whenever he might, to see how they were doing.
The awkward thing was that they had practically no other
relations and that his own affairs took up all his time.
He had put them in possession of Bly, which was healthy and secure,
and had placed at the head of their little establishment--
but below stairs only--an excellent woman, Mrs. Grose,
whom he was sure his visitor would like and who had formerly been
maid to his mother. She was now housekeeper and was also acting
for the time as superintendent to the little girl, of whom,
without children of her own, she was, by good luck, extremely fond.