It would be possible, if it were not sacrilegious, to assert that the family at Helmsbury Hall had been divided by Nature into two sections as well as into two sexes. The father and the son stood on one side, the mother and the daughter on the other. It may be so in other families, but I do not know. Nobody could mistake the fact that Harry was Lord Venniker’s son. But not less clear was it that Ethel was Lady Venniker’s daughter. The resemblance was one not of feature only, but of disposition. And it had been strengthened by circumstances. As Lord Venniker’s eldest son, Harry had been thrown into close and constant intercourse with his father, and he had become imbued with his father’s love of sport, his preference for a rural life, his kindly aristocratic feeling, and his scarcely veiled depreciation of literature. What Harry Venniker possessed, and his father did not, was a peculiar softness of manner, perhaps too of heart, and this was Lady Venniker’s gift to him. It is possible that Ethel Venniker would have sympathised more completely with her father’s tastes and opinions, had she not lived so much alone with her mother. But many long hours, when the father and son were tramping the moors, the mother and daughter spent in reading or talking of literature (of which they both were fond), or topics of the day, or in forming plans for the happiness of the tenants in Helmsbury and the neighbouring villages. Still Ethel Venniker was a good horsewoman, and she loved riding. The meetings of the two sections of the family in the evenings (if Lady Venniker were well enough to come downstairs or to let them join her after dinner in her sitting-room) were always interesting. They were all more or less on common ground then. The daily ordering of their life, the administration of the estate, the progress of politics, the formation and changes of public opinion, the relation of classes, and now and again the state of the Church, were (among many others) the subjects discussed. They were subjects which, as the children grew older, appealed to all, though especially to Lord and Lady Venniker, and to them from somewhat different points of view. In discussing the condition of the poor, where he was the landlord, she was the philanthropist. In affairs of the Church, he was the churchman, she the Christian. Sometimes when he thought of men’s bodies, she thought of their souls. He believed more in law, and she in love. He was anxious to reform institutions, she was rather anxious to reform individual lives. He was apt to insist upon the rights of property, but she would dwell upon its duties.