Old Christian Harefield, the father of the present owner of the estate, had been distinguished for various eccentricities, the chief of which was love of money. He did not love it too well to spend it on himself, but he loved it too well to waste it upon his fellow-creatures, whom he did not love. He was a born man-hater. No youthful disappointments, no wrong-doing of a familiar friend, no inconstancy of a woman, had soured his temper, or changed the current of his life. In his nursery he had regarded outside humanity with a cold distrust, and had been selfish in the transactions of his babyhood. At Eton he was known as the most respectable of lads, and was universally detested. There was a legend of his having given a boy he disliked the scarlatina, deliberately and of malice aforethought; and this was the only thing he had ever been known to give away. At the University he took care of himself, made his rooms the prettiest in his quad, rode good horses, read diligently and took his degree with ease, but he refused all invitations to wine parties, rather than incur the expense of returning hospitality, and he was remembered among his contemporaries as Stingy Harefield. When the time came for him to marry he made no attempt to escape that ordeal, as it presented itself to him in the form of an alliance with a certain Jane Pynsent, a young lady whose personal attractions were not startling, but whose father had enriched himself by commerce, and had recently acquired a large tract of land in Lincolnshire. The young lady and the tract of land went in one lot, and Christian married her, without feeling himself guilty of that kind of sentimental folly called ‘falling in love;’ a weakness which offended his reason in those inferior animals whom stern necessity obliged him to acknowledge as his fellow-creatures. From this alliance of the mercantile classes and the landed gentry sprang an only child, Christian the second. In his boyhood and youth he gave indications of a nobler and wider nature than his father’s. He was careless of money--had his attachments among his schoolfellows and companions at the University--gave wine parties on a larger scale than any undergraduate of his year--read hard--rode hard--was at once dissipated and a student--came through his examinations with flying colours, and left behind him a reputation which caused at least half a dozen freshmen to ruin themselves in the endeavour to imitate ‘Alcibiades Harefield,’ that being the name which Christian the second had won for himself.