Perhaps the person who suffered the most from the “madness” which may be said to be inherent in the Vavasour blood was their only child--the Lady Millicent, whose career will form one of the subjects of these pages. To her, without intending to be otherwise than affectionate and kind, the behaviour of both father and mother was invariably cold and distant. She was never forgiven for the “sin” of her birth--never pardoned, poor unconscious child, for the guilt of being a girl! As the last male descendant of the Vavasours, Lord Gillingham would willingly have given ten years at least of his vast rent-roll, for a son in whose person the grand old title might be perpetuated; and the Countess his wife fully shared in what she deemed his very natural discontent. To bear without murmuring this crumpled rose-leaf on their luxurious couch was not in the nature of either; so instead of making the best of the only child with which Providence had blessed them, they did precisely the contrary; and the little Lady Millicent, deprived of the caresses and the softening influence of a gentle mother’s love, grew up as I have described her to be--cold, arrogant, and unamiable. The young lady herself was fully capable of appreciating the wrong that had been done, not only to her family but to society at large, by the deplorable accident of her birth. As one of the richest heiresses in England, and as the bearer of a name so noble and so honoured, she was of course a “personage;” and as one of the uppermost (that could not be denied) of the upper ten thousand she would take her place, and an exalted place too, among the great ones of the land; but--there was the rub!--_there_ “pinched the shoe,” and “galled the withers”--she was not and would not be, in the course of nature, a peeress! Power--the power that wealth would give--was hers, but precedence--that honour so dearly valued by her sex--was sadly and, unless it were obtained by marriage, for ever wanting.