II.--A GOOD SAMARITAN, 19 III.--HOLMCASTLE MANOR, 28 IV.--THE SQUIRE OF HOLMCASTLE, 33 V.--THE MANWARING “FAMILY TREE,” 42 VI.--“EHRENBREITSTEIN,” 51 VII.--THE FALL OF WILFRED, 60 VIII.--A BLASTED LIFE, 70 IX.--A BRANCH IS LOPPED FROM THE FAMILY TREE, 78 X.--WILFRED MANWARING GOES INTO EXILE, 84 XI.--THE SQUIRE LEARNS THE TRUTH, 91 XII.--THE DUKE OF RIBBLESDALE’S LETTER, 101 XIII.--“IN EXTREMIS,” 112 XIV.--MR. TRESHAM POTTS, 116 XV.--THE TREE IS RE-GRAFTED, 125 XVI.--LAST DAYS AT HOLMCASTLE, 133 XVII.--EVELYN VISITS THE DUCHESS, 140 XVIII.--HER GRACE OF RIBBLESDALE, 151 XIX.--“THE AUNTS,” 161 XX.--THE VEHME-GERICHT OF HAMPTON COURT, 169 XXI.--SERGEANT SMITH, V.C., 181 XXII.--THE LOST FOUND, 194 XXIII.--WILFRED SMITH GOES TO THE JEWS, 202 XXIV.--WILFRED SMITH’S VOYAGE OUT, 210 XXV.--THE MARCH TO CANDAHAR, 220 XXVI.--A PACKET OF LETTERS, 226 XXVII.--THE DUCHESS’S GRAND TABLEAU VIVANT, 233 XXVIII.--COMING OF AGE, 241 XXIX.--“ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL,” 252 EVELYN MANWARING. CHAPTER I. EVELYN MANWARING ARRIVES AT THE PALACE. ALL the morning of that particular 8th of November upon which some of the events of the ensuing story began, a dense fog had been brooding over the Essex marshes. The silence of those gloomy expanses of faded yellow grass and brown slime, deposited by earlier autumnal floods, was deep and oppressive, and was only broken at times by the cough of a footsore sheep as it gnawed at a half-rotten turnip brought wearily down in creaking wains from the sodden uplands, by the distrustful low of a bullock surprised by the sudden apparition of a fellow-animal of the same species with himself, or by the shrill alarm-whistle of a steamer upon the neighbouring, but well-nigh invisible river. By noon the last-named sounds had ceased, for steamboat traffic had become impossible from the density of the mist, and then, little by little, a raw, chilly wind began to blow from the east. This wind gradually drove the fog up-stream, until it met and mingled with that pall of black smoke which legislative and municipal incompetence, and that often fatal English respect for “vested interests,” as confirmed nuisances are called by their originators, allow to pollute and render deadly the atmosphere of the first city in the world--wonderful and incomparable London.