Beechfield Hall was the name of the old manor-house in which the Vanes had lived for many generations. The present head of the family, General Richard Vane, was a man of fifty-five, a childless widower, whose interests centred in the management of his estate and the welfare of his brother Sydney and Sydney's wife and child. In the natural course of events, Sydney would eventually have succeeded to the property. It had always been a matter of regret to the General that neither he nor his brother had a son; and, when Sydney's life was prematurely cut short, the General's real grief for his brother's loss was deepened and embittered by the thought that the last chance of an heir was gone, and that the family name--one of the most ancient in the county--would soon become extinct, for a daughter did not count in the General's meditation. It did not occur to his mind as within the limits of possibility that he himself should marry again. He had always hoped that Sydney--twenty years younger than himself, and the husband of a fair and blooming wife--would have a son to bear his name. Hitherto the Sydney Vanes had been unfortunate in their offsprings. Of five beautiful children only one had lived beyond the first few months of babyhood--and that one was a girl! But father, mother, and uncle had gone on hoping for better things. Now it seemed likely that little Enid, the nine-year-old daughter, would be the last of the Vanes, and that with the General the name of the family would finally die out. Beechfield Hall had long been known as one of the pleasantest houses in the county. It was a large red-brick, comfortable-looking mansion, made picturesque by a background of lofty trees, and by the ivy and Virginia creeper and clematis in which it was embowered, rather than by the style of its architecture. Along the front of the building ran a wide terrace, with stone balustrades and flights of steps at either end leading to the flower garden, which sloped down to an ornamental piece of water fed by springs from the rich meadow-land beyond. This terrace and the exquisitely-kept garden gave the house a stateliness of aspect, which it would have lost if severed from its surroundings; but the General was proud of every stick and stone about the place, and could never be brought to see that its beauty existed chiefly in his own fond imagination.