Nothing was further than charity from the Squire's thoughts as he rode to Flamestead; but he was a man of reflective temper, and he always looked far ahead into the future. Ten months ago his fair young wife had died, leaving him an only child--a daughter of half a year old--and now the child was sixteen months old, and her nurse had told him that she began to pine in the silence and seclusion of a house which was like a hermitage, and gardens which were gloomy and lonesome as a desert wilderness. He had poohpoohed the nurse's complaint. "'Tis you, woman, who want more company, not that baby," he had said; but after this he had been more observant of his daughter, and he had noticed that the baby's large blue eyes shone out of a pale old-looking face, which was not what a baby's face should be. The eyes themselves had a mournful yearning look, as if seeking something that was never found. "Babies never thrive in a house where there are no children," said the nurse; and the Squire began to believe her. The child sickened soon after this with some slight infantile ailment, and Mr. Bosworth took occasion to question the doctor as to the nurse's theory. The medico admitted that there was some reason in the woman's view. Children always throve best who had the society of other children. Fairmile Court was one of the finest places within fifty miles of London, but it was doubtless somewhat secluded and silent--there was even an air of gloom. Mr. Bosworth had allowed the timber to grow to an extent which, looked at from the point of view of health and cheerfulness-- "I am not going to cut down my trees to gratify any doctor in Christendom!" cried the Squire savagely; "but if you say my little girl wants another little girl to play with her, one must be got." This had all happened about a fortnight before that September morning when the fatherless baby was found sleeping so peacefully beside the dead. The Squire had shrunk from introducing a stranger's brat into that stately desolate home of his, which it had been the business of his later years to keep closed against all the world. In his solitary rides he had reconnoitred many a farmer's homestead where children swarmed; he had looked in upon his gamekeeper's and gardener's cottages, where it seemed to him there was ever a plethora of babies; but he could not bring himself to invite one of these superfluous brats to take up its abode with him, to lie cheek by jowl with his dead wife's fair young daughter--a child whose lineage was alike ancient and honourable on the side of mother and father. His soul revolted against the spawn of the day-labourer or even of the tenant-farmer; and he hated the idea of the link which such an adoption would make between him and a whole family of his inferiors.