Whilst the Vicar and his lawyer were in serious conference in the library. Miss Eleanor St. Clair was whiling away the tedious quarter of an hour before the dinner-bell with the only other guest of the evening. She was the Archdeacon’s only child, and he a widower for some years, and, since her mother’s death, the charge of the household had devolved upon daughter. Perhaps that fact had given to Eleanor a thoughtfulness and an air of authority beyond her years. Tall, raven of hair, of pure, pale the complexion, with dark orbs, full of life and intelligence, Eleanor moved with the easy grace of accustomed dignity. _Incessit regina_. Related on her mother’s side to the noble house of Yarborough, she did not forget that her grandfather was an earl, and it is possible she was equally well aware that the coronet of a countess would sit becomingly upon the smooth, white brow borne so proudly above her long but rounded neck, and the white smooth shoulders her simple costume of to-night rather hinted than revealed. Her companion, Squire Wright, was the largest landowner, except perhaps the noble family aforesaid, for miles around. He said, and believed, that when Norman William came to the fens, a Wright was a Saxon Thane, and lord of many a wide-spreading demense, and that, from that day to this, Thoresby Manor had never been without a squire of his family sprung in direct line from the stout old Thane, who had dealt his shrewd knocks against the mailed warriors on Senlac’s fatal field. One felt little disposed to question the genealogy, looking at the present representative of the ancient line. George Wright was a well-set, stalwart man, of some thirty summers. His hair was flaxen, and curled closely to his head, his short beard and moustache were of flax, rudded by the sun, his shoulders were broad, his chest deep, his cheeks full, his eye of pale blue—a healthy, manly young Saxon, and good to look upon. For the rest, was he not in the commission of the peace, had a troop in the Yeomanry, riding to the annual inspection at the head of his own tenantry, could give a good account of himself among the partridges, and was so good a judge of a horse or a bullock that he was one of the judges at the County Cattle Show, and if not especially brilliant, was also not especially stupid; and if he had sowed any wild oats had sowed them discreetly and without scandal; was regular in his church-going, a steady supporter of the Crown, the Church, and the finest constitution in the world, and had no silly fads. He was an easy landlord, and, therefore, popular; his estate was unencumbered, and there were no sisters or younger brothers to provide for, and as it was now full time in everybody’s opinion, his own included, that he should marry and settle down, he told himself to-night for the thousandth time, that the country for once was right when it declared that no more gracious nor more beautiful nor more worthy a mistress for Thoresby