Wodensbourne was as different from any house that Colin had ever seen before, as the low flat country, rich and damp and monotonous, was unlike the infinitely varied landscape to which his eye had been accustomed all his life. The florid upholstery of Ardmartin contrasted almost as strangely with the sober magnificence of the old family-house, in which the Franklands had lived and died for generations, as did the simple little rooms to which Colin had been accustomed in his father’s house. Perhaps, on the whole, Ramore, where everything was for use and nothing for show, was less unharmonious with all he saw about him than the equipments of the bran new castle, all built out of new money, and gilded and lackered to a climax of domestic finery. Colin’s pupil was the invalid of the family; a boy of twelve, who could not go to Eton like his brothers, but whom the good-natured baronet thought, as was natural, the cleverest of his family.--“That’s why I wanted you so much, Campbell,” Sir Thomas said, by way of setting Colin at ease in his new occupation; “he’s not a boy to be kept to classics isn’t Charley--there’s nothing that boy wouldn’t master--and shut up as he has to be, with his wretched health, he wants a little variety. I’ve always heard you took a wider range in Scotland; that’s what I want for my boy.” It was with this exposition of his patron’s wishes that the new tutor was introduced to his duties at Wodensbourne. But a terrible disappointment awaited the young man, a disappointment utterly unforeseen. There was nobody there but Sir Thomas himself, and Charley, and some little ones still in the nursery. “We’re all by ourselves, but you won’t mind,” said the baronet, who seemed to think it all the better for Colin; “my lady and Matty will be home before Christmas, and you can get yourself settled comfortably in the meantime. Lady Frankland is with her sister, who is in very bad health. I don’t know what people mean by getting into bad health--women, too, that can’t go in for free living and that sort of thing,” said Sir Thomas. “The place looks dreary without the ladies, but they’ll be back before Christmas,” and he went to sleep after dinner as usual, and left the young tutor at the other side of the table sitting in a kind of stupefied amazement and mortification, in the silence, wondering what he came here for, and where all his hopes and brilliant auguries had gone.