Only she could have carried it on to such a close, indeed only General Boldero's eldest daughter--and only daughter by his first marriage--would have engaged in it at all. The younger girls, of whom there were still two unmarried and living at home, never, in common parlance, stood up to their father--though, if he had not been as blind as such an autocrat is wont to be, he would have easily detected that they had their own ways of rendering his tyrannical rule tolerable, and that while he fancied himself the sole dictator of his house, he had in fact neither part nor lot in its real existence. What is more easily satisfied than the vanity of stupid importance always upon its perch? The general's habits and hours were known, also the few points upon which he was really adamant. He was proud, and he was mean. He liked to live pompously, and fare luxuriously,--he made it his business to cut off every expense that did not affect his own comfort, or dignity. But that done, other matters could go on as they chose for him. So that while it was not to be thought of that Boldero Abbey should exist without a full staff of retainers without and within, it was all that his eldest daughter--the family manager--could do to get her own and her sisters' allowances paid with any regularity--and whereas the stables were well supplied with horses, and a new carriage was no uncommon purchase, it was as much as any one's place was worth to hire a fly from the station on an unexpectedly wet day. When, exactly three years before the date on which our story opens, there had appeared on the scene a suitor for the hand of the youngest Miss Boldero, in the shape of a rich young Liverpool gentleman--General Boldero always talked of young Stubbs as "a Liverpool gentleman," and his hearers knew what he meant--he was accorded a free hand in reality, though demur was strewn on the surface like cream on a pudding. "I have had to give in," quoth the general with a rueful countenance--but he spread the news right and left, and Leonore was kissed and bidden make the "Liverpool gentleman" a good wife. Whereupon Leonore laughed and promised. Godfrey Stubbs was her very first admirer, and she thought him as nice as he could be. At first the Boldero girls had been somewhat surprised at the encouragement shown a stranger to come freely among them, but when it became clear that Mr. Godfrey Stubbs was a privileged person, they found it wonderfully pleasant to have a man about the place, where a pair of trousers was a rare sight--and the inevitable happened.