Of course the Vansittarts occupied the biggest and most expensive house they had been able to procure on taking up their residence in London. They were _nouveaux riches_ of the very first water. John Vansittart, the head of the family, was the son of a respectable Berkshire farmer, who had given him a thousand pounds as a start in life, with which the young man had gone out to New Zealand, and invested in a sheep run, which had resulted in his becoming a millionaire. Yet no extraordinary good luck had contributed to his success. He had simply been frugal and painstaking, and kept his eyes open, and married a woman who helped instead of hindered him. And now, at sixty years of age, he was celebrated for being one of the largest sheepowners in New Zealand. He had not married early, and his only child, a daughter called Grace, was just twenty years old. She had been in England much longer than her parents. They had sent her home to a fashionable boarding-school at twelve years of age, and had not found time to join her until a year before this story opens. They had returned to England with an idea of remaining there, but they had soon changed their minds. Their bush life had unfitted them for society. Satins and laces and shining broadcloth sat uneasily upon them, and both Mr and Mrs Vansittart longed for the moment when they should settle down in their New Zealand home again. Not that they would admit, even to themselves, that the whirl and bustle, the pomp and formality, of a London life were too much for them. On the contrary, they blamed the great Metropolis for being slow and stupid, and would not allow that anything it produced could equal the same article in New Zealand. They were both very fat, and simple, and goodnatured--extravagantly proud of their fashionable daughter Grace, who did not acquiesce in the opinions of her parents--and ready to spend their money like water, because they really did not know what else to do with it. They lived in a splendid mansion overlooking the park, which had been furnished from basement to attic, at the sweet will of the upholsterer, and consequently bore the impress of wealth upon every part of it. The hall was carpeted with bear and tiger skins, and hung with armour and stuffed deers’ heads, interspersed with blue and white Nankin China, and beaten brass from Benares. The drawing-room was furnished in the style of Louis Quatorze, and opened into a vast conservatory, rich with tropical plants. In the dining-room, the walls of which were hung with stamped leather, and lighted by silver sconces, were to be found as many portraits of gallant lords and lovely ladies, figuring in the costumes of three and four hundred years before, as if John Vansittart had come of a long line of noble ancestors, instead of being unable to trace his pedigree beyond the loins of the Berkshire farmer, whose father had been an unknown quantity. The whole house