When, after her parents’ decease, which occurred soon after she had completed her twenty-third year, the orphaned heiress pondered regretfully upon these things, the idea of purchasing with her valued thousands one of the highest of England’s titles could scarcely fail to occur to one whose love of rank--the well-imbibed prejudice of a dull and unsympathised-with childhood--was only outdone by her passionate attachment to power. Well did the Lady Millicent know--for her girlhood had not all been spent in the seclusion of Gillingham, and at London balls and routs and dinner-parties she had learned something of the level of gold--well did the heiress know that, were she willing to barter her rent-roll for rank, the negotiation would have been only too easily effected. But, all things considered, this young woman was not so willing. Any superiority enjoyed by a husband, any benefit conferred upon her through him, would--so singularly was she constituted--have been as gall and wormwood to her taste. She was overweeningly proud, besides, even as her parents had been before her, of the name she bore; and, singular as it may at first seem, it was to that very pride in, and attachment to the name of Vavasour that the tardy marriage of this proud and impracticable lady was owing. Late in the summer of the year following on her accession to wealth and power, the Lady Millicent set forth in great state on a continental tour. As companions on the way she had chosen Lord and Lady Merioneth: a good simple-minded pair, ready and able to be amused, and withal tolerably slow to comprehend (from the circumstance of their own entire want of foolish family pride) the besetting sin of their young companion.