The Hossacks were not an old family. They could not boast that identity with the soil which constitutes rural aristocracy. They had been bankers and merchants in days gone by, and their younger sons were still merchants, or bankers. Geoffrey’s father, and the Squire of Hillersdon Grange, had succeeded, one to the patrimonial acres, acquired a few years before his birth; the other to the counting-house and its wider chances of wealth. Both had flourished. The Squire living the life that pleased him best, farming a little in a vastly expensive and vastly unprofitable fashion; writing a letter to the _Times_ now and then about the prospects of the harvest, or the last discovery in drainage; quoting Virgil, sitting at quarter-sessions, and laying down parochial law in the vestry. The younger making most money, working like a slave, and fancying himself the happier and the better man; to be cut off in his prime by heart-disease or an overworked brain, while Geoffrey was a lad at Winchester. The grounds at Hillersdon were simply perfection. The place was on the borders of the New Forest, and the Squire’s woods melted into that wider domain. A river wound through the park, and washed the border of the lawn; a river which had shadowy willow-sheltered bends where trout abounded, rushy coves and creeks famous for jack, a river delightful alike to the angler and to the landscape painter. ‘Not half a bad place,’ said Geoffrey, yawning and looking at his watch on the first morning after his arrival; ‘and now, having breakfasted copiously upon your rustic fare—that dish of cutlets _à la Soubise_ was worthy of mention—may I ask what I am to do with myself? Just eleven! Three hours before luncheon! Do you do anything in the country when you are not eating or sleeping?’ This inquiry was addressed to the sisters Belle and Jessie—good-looking young women, with fine complexions, ample figures, clear blue eyes, light brown hair, and the freshest of morning toilets, in the nautical style, as appropriate to the New Forest—wide blue collars flung back from full white throats, straw hats bound with blue ribbon, blue serge petticoats festooned coquettishly above neat little buckled shoes, with honest thick soles for country walking; altogether damsels of the order called ‘nice,’ but in no manner calculated to storm the heart of man. Good daughters in the present, good wives and mothers, perhaps, in the future, but not of the syren tribe. ‘I don’t suppose Hillersdon is much duller than the backwoods of America,’ said Arabella, the elder, with some dignity; ‘and I hope you may be able to endure life until the 1st with no better company than ours.’