The Lacys were a large family, there were seven of them--“the curate’s half-dozen,” Lord Guernsey used often to say, with a cheery laugh, which would have sounded pleasant from any lips, but was, of course, doubly exhilarating from a lord’s. He was a capital person altogether, that “belted earl,” whose girdle was capable of encircling the slender waists of two modern guardsmen, and whose face beamed so pleasantly with genuine good-nature, to say nothing of the good things of this life, that the man must have been morose indeed, and ingrained with mental jaundice, whose spirits were not lightened by the glow of his genial companionship. Between the Vavasour family and that of the Lacys, who were comparatively new settlers in the county (_their_ coming dating as lately as the Restoration), there had never existed any of those ties, either of friendship or family connection, which near neighbourhood is sometimes known to cement. Though, as it is only natural to conclude, many brave sons and fair daughters must, in the course of centuries, have sprung from the respective marriage-beds of those highly distinguished families, no intermarriages had taken place between them. The hereditary politics also of the two races were, and always had been, diametrically opposed--one reason probably, among many, why no closer bonds than the cold ones of acquaintanceship had hitherto linked together the members of two of the most ancient, as well as most respected “houses” in the county. The Earl and Countess of Guernsey, who, as I before said, were genial, warm-hearted people, would gladly (not for the sake of Lady Millicent, whom they did not like, but for that of the young people at the Castle, whom they did) have established warmer and cordial relations with their neighbours at Gillingham Castle. They were unfeignedly sorry for the poor girls, whose youth was blighted by Lady Millicent’s selfish adherence to a system of seclusion--a system introduced and persevered in, as Lord Guernsey, who was an outspoken man, did not hesitate to say, far more from the promptings of a parsimonious spirit than from any deep and lingering sorrow for “poor Cecil’s” death. “Don’t tell me,” he would say, speaking almost bitterly for one so habitually good-tempered,--“don’t tell me about Lady Mill’s being a ‘pattern widow.’ She is no more a pattern widow than she was, at any time since I have known anything about her, a pattern wife or a pattern mother. I never had any patience with all that flunkeyish humbug about Lady Millicent’s perfections. Whatever good was done in that family--and a great deal _was_ done, that we all know--is to be attributed solely to Cecil Vavasour. As for Lady Mill--” “Well, well,” put in Lady Guernsey good-humouredly, “I think there is something to be said for her. That Will of her father’s must be terribly trying to a person of her domineering temper.”