His dinner-party consisted only of himself and his daughter Alice. His wife had been dead for many years. His mother, Lady Valeria, was still alive and very active, and having just numbered fourscore years, had attained the right of her own way. By right or wrong, she had always contrived to enjoy that special easement; and even now, though she lived apart, little could be done without her in the household management. Hilary, Sir Roland’s only son, was now at the Temple, eating his way to the bar, or feeding for some other mischief; and Alice, the only daughter living, was the baronet’s favourite companion, and his darling. Now, whether from purity of descent, or special mode of selection, or from living so long on a hill with northern consequences, or from some other cause, to be extracted by philosophers from bestial analogies--anyhow, one thing is certain, these Lorraines were not, and had not for a long time been, at all like the rest of the world around them. It was not pride of race that made them unambitious, and well content, and difficult to get at. Neither was it any other ill affection to mankind. They liked a good man, when they saw him; and naturally so much the more, as it became harder to find him. Also they were very kind to all the poor people around them, and kept well in with the Church, and did whatever else is comely. But long before Sir Roland’s time all Sussex knew, and was content to know, that, as a general rule, “those Lorraines went nowhere.” Neighbours who were conscious of what we must now begin to call “co-operative origin” felt that though themselves could claim justices of the peace, high sheriffs, and knights of the shire among their kin, yet they could not quite leap over that romantic bar of ages which is so deterrent, perhaps because it is so shadowy. Neither did they greatly care to press their company upon people so different from themselves, and so unlikely to admire them. But if any one asked where lay the root of the difference, which so long had marked the old family on the hill, perhaps no one (least of all any of the Lorraines themselves) could have given the proper answer. Plenty of other folk there were who held aloof from public life. Simplicity, kindness, and chivalry might be found, by a man with an active horse, in other places also: even a feeling, as nearly akin as our nature admits to contempt of money, at that time went on somewhere. How, then, differed these Lorraines from other people of equal rank and like habits with them? Men who differ from their fellows seem, by some law of nature, to resent and disclaim the difference. Those who are proud, and glory in their variance from the common type, seldom vary much from it. So that in the year of grace 1811, the mighty comet that scared the world, spreading its tail over good and bad, overhung no house less conscious of anything under its roof peculiar, than the house of Coombe Lorraine.