Fairburn Hall had never been a house for tender, honest women; the Heaths, who are celebrated like another noble race of the same sort, for their hard hearts and excellent digestions, had never been good husbands. Fortunately, daughters were rare in the family. How Sir Massingberd would have brought up a daughter, I shudder to think. One son had been the sole offspring vouchsafed to the baronets of this line for many generations, except the last; and in the present case, there was no such direct heir. Some said Sir Massingberd had married secretly, but was separated from his wife, and some said he had not; but it seemed somehow certain that with him the immediate succession from father to son would cease. His brother Gilbert had married young in Italy, and had died in that country within the same year. His widow had brought his posthumous child, when a few months old, to the Hall, at the invitation of Sir Massingberd, and had remained there for some time. The villagers still spoke of the dark foreign lady as being the most beautiful creature they had ever beheld; the Park keepers used to come upon her in solitary glades, singing sweetly; but ah! so sorrowfully, to her child in a tongue that they did not understand. The baronet himself was absent, not yet cast out of the court whirlpool, and the lonely vastness of the place was not displeasing to the young widow, wishing, perhaps, to be left undisturbed with her grief; but after Sir Massingberd came down, she remained but a very few days. It was said that she fled with her babe in a winter's night, and that her little footprints were traced in the snow to the cross-roads where the mail went by, by which she had arrived. She was not rich, and had come down in a manner quite different from that of her brother-in-law, who, broken and ruined though he was, had posted with four horses. That was how all gentlefolks of the county travelled in those days; even the very barristers on circuit indulged, and were obliged to do so, in a chaise and a pair. The mother of Marmaduke Heath, however, who was heir-presumptive to the largest landed property in Midshire, was very poor. Whether the late baronet had omitted to make a proper provision for his younger son, or whether Gilbert had made away with it after the usual manner of the Heaths, I do not know; but his widow and child betook themselves into Devonshire--selected, perhaps, from its climate approaching nearer than any other part of England to that of her native land--and, there lived in a very humble fashion. How Marmaduke ever got into his uncle's hands, I never could clearly understand; his mother had died suddenly, whereupon the family lawyer, Mr. Clint of Russell Square, who had the entire management of the Heath property, had in the first instance taken possession of the lad; but Sir Massingberd had claimed his right to be the guardian of his nephew, and it could not be disallowed.