that he had so lost it. He made believe, even to himself, that it was still as safely in his possession as ever it had been. But the acute consciousness of its loss which came over him at odd times--only to be at once thrust into the background with a firm hand--by no means tended to mitigate the intensity of his determination to be avenged, in one form or another, on the woman to whom he owed this strange new feeling, which not seldom made him shrink within himself, as though he were in reality little better than a whipped cur. Stammars, the residence of Sir Thomas Dudgeon, was, as a family mansion, still quite in its infancy, being something under twenty years old. Sir Thomas had stuck to the old house as long as it was safe for him to do so; but when, during a night of terrible storm, a great part of it was blown about his ears, he began to see that it would not be advisable to delay his removal much longer. So, on a windy knoll about half a mile from the old house, the new mansion was built. It was built with all modern conveniences and appliances. The rooms were large and lofty, and had huge plate-glass windows with venetian blinds. Round about were gardens, and shrubberies, and hothouses, with a view beyond over miles of pleasant Hertfordshire scenery. Everybody expressed themselves as being enchanted with the house, and yet everybody felt that it lacked one essential. There was no homelike comfort about it. Whether it was that the rooms were too big and the fire-places too few; whether it was that the house was built so high above the surrounding country as to be exposed to every wind that blew, and so had never been able to get itself warmed through; or from whatever other cause it might arise, certain it is that Stammars never seemed otherwise than cold and comfortless. Each room in the house seemed to have its own particular draught, while the wind seemed to be for ever playing at hide-and-seek up and down the great wide corridors and staircases, banging every now and then a bedroom door, or creeping with snake-like motion under any piece of carpet that had not been firmly nailed down.