One morning in April, 1889, all that part of the population around Prince's Gate that was up and stirring at seven o'clock, gaped with surprise and said to each other, "The McGuckin houses are let." The footmen loitering in the gorgeous vestibules, the housemaids lazily straightening their caps as they threw wide the silken curtains, the milkmen clattering upon their rounds, all regarded with interest the great granite pile that had stood tenantless since the day the builders and decorators left it ten years before. For the McGuckin houses were so vast and splendid that living in them would have been dear had the rent been thrown in. Luckily, there were but two of them. The lack of tenants had driven the original McGuckin to suicide--but--it never rains but it pours. The tenants that had been ten years in coming both arrived the same week. One house was taken by Sir John Blood, of Blood Hall, Suffolk, nephew and heir of the Marquis of Longacre, and the other by an American family named March. Although Sir John's wealth and position may be inferred from the meager particulars already given of him, yet must the Marches be described first. And Theodora March must not only take precedence of the nephew and heir of the Marquis of Longacre, but of her own family as well--for to Theodora had this precedence always been allowed, although the very youngest scion of the house of March. She was slender and supple, and had a beautiful head of rich gold hair that made an aureole around her pure and sparkling face. By one of those freaks, so common in American civilization, Theodora, whose ancestors had for unnumbered generations sold hardware and cutlery and groceries, and were born and bred to trade and barter, looked as if she had all of the blood of all of the Howards in her veins. March _père_, like Napoleon, might have been called the first of his family, but Theodora had grown up with all the tendencies toward a privileged class floating around in American society. She stamped her letters with a crest she could almost persuade herself her ancestors had borne at the battle of Agincourt, and adopted the Earls de la Marche of the middle ages as her progenitors. Like many others who may be called fugitives from the lower middle class, she hated it with indescribable intensity, and shook her small white fist at it and stoned it whenever she got a chance. Besides Theodora there was Anne, a pretty but incomplete model of Nature's gorgeous after-thought, the younger sister. Theodora was a leonine blonde, while Anne was a nondescript. Mrs. March, an amiable, obstinate old person, was the third and last and least interesting of the family.