‘Here are the money-bags,’ he would have said; ‘sign me this bond, and Culverhouse is yours, free of the mortgages that now degrade and humiliate your race. For twenty years you may reign securely in the halls of your ancestors--and then----’ Perhaps Kenrick might have had the force of mind to refuse so frankly diabolical a bargain, but when Mephistopheles assumed the amiable countenance of Selina Dulcimer, and whispered in his ear, ‘Marry Beatrix Harefield, and let her fortune revive the glory of your race,’ the young man was sorely tempted. He had promised his cousin Cyril that he would not attempt to become his rival, but he did not know how far Cyril’s love affair had gone. He had no idea that Beatrix had already made her choice, irrevocably, and was ready to sacrifice fortune and her father’s favour for her lover. Kenrick was not in love with Beatrix Harefield, in spite of all those hints and innuendos wherewith Mrs. Dulcimer had artfully striven to kindle the fire of passion in his heart. He was not in love with her, but he admired her beyond any woman he had ever met, and he could but remember that her fortune would give him the desire of his heart. He was above the meanness of marrying for money. He would not have sold himself to a woman he disliked or despised, any more than he would have sold himself to Satan. He would have accounted one bargain as base as the other. But he would have been very glad to marry a woman with money, provided he could think her the first of women, and worthy to rule in the halls of his race. That he should love her was a secondary necessity. Sir Kenrick was not a young man who considered loving and being beloved essential to the happiness of life. Nature had made him of colder stuff than his cousin Cyril. He could do very well without love, but existence could hardly be tolerable to him without Culverhouse Castle. He thought of Beatrix Harefield as he paced the long tapestried saloon on the evening of his arrival. He had ordered a fire to be lighted here, though old Mrs. Mopson, the major-domo’s wife, had strongly recommended him to sit in the library, or his mother’s morning-room. ‘You’ll be a deal snuggerer than in that there big room, Sir Kenrick,’ she urged. ‘I don’t say it’s damp, for I opens the windows every fine morning--but it’s awful chill, and it’d take a’most a stack of logs to warm it.’ ‘Never mind the chilliness, Betty,’ said Kenrick, ‘I want to sit in the saloon. It’s a treat to see the dear old room again after three years’ absence.’ ‘Ah,’ said Betty, ‘there ain’t another room in Hampshire ekal to it,’ firmly convinced that Hampshire was the world, or at any rate all the world that was civilized and worth living in. Once, when somebody asked Betty Mopson if she had ever been so far as London, she replied, ‘No, thank God, I’m no furriner.’