Chapter II

The Earles, of Earlescourt, were one of the oldest families in
England. The "Barony of Earle" is mentioned in the early reigns
of the Tudor kings. They never appeared to have taken any great
part either in politics or warfare. The annals of the family
told of simple, virtuous lives; they contained, too, some few
romantic incidents. Some of the older barons had been brave
soldiers; and there were stories of hair-breadth escapes and
great exploits by flood and field. Two or three had taken to
politics, and had suffered through their eagerness and zeal; but,
as a rule, the barons of Earle had been simple, kindly gentlemen,
contented to live at home upon their own estates, satisfied with
the duties they found there, careful in the alliances they
contracted, and equally careful in the bringing up and
establishment of their children. One and all they had been
zealous cultivators of the fine arts. Earlescourt was almost
overcrowded with pictures, statues, and works of art.

Son succeeded father, inheriting with title and estate the same
kindly, simple dispositions and the same tastes, until Rupert
Earle, nineteenth baron, with whom our story opens, became Lord
Earle. Simplicity and kindness were not his characteristics. He
was proud, ambitious, and inflexible; he longed for the time when
the Earles should become famous, when their name should be one of
weight in council. In early life his ambitious desires seemed
about to be realized. He was but twenty when he succeeded his
father, and was an only child, clever, keen and ambitious. In
his twenty-first year he married Lady Helena Brooklyn, the