"My poor brother!" sighed Lady Emily. "He was in love with the belle of the season--a foolish pink and white thing, with one long curl streaming over her left shoulder, and a frock that you would laugh at, if you could see her to-day. Of course Allan's chances were hopeless--a younger son, with a commander's pay, eked out by a pittance from his father. She used to ride in the Row with a plume in her hat--half a Spanish fowl--quite the right thing, I assure you, at that time. Your uncle was twelve years older than I, you know, Allan; and I was still in short petticoats when he went off to China broken-hearted. Of course she wouldn't have him, though she said he was the best waltzer in London. Her people wouldn't let her look at him even, from a matrimonial point of view." Allan went to church with his mother on Easter morning--attended two services in the fine old church, which seemed much too grand and too big for the tiny town--her loving heart swelling with pride at having such an admirable son. Her friends had always been fond of him; but now it seemed to her there was a touch of deference in their kindness. They had liked him as _her_ son, and the inheritor of Fendyke Hall; but perhaps they liked him even a little better now that he was his own master, a man of independent means. He accompanied Lady Emily in her weekly visit to the schools; he assisted in dealing out Easter gifts to the school-children, and distributed half a dozen pounds of the very strongest obtainable tobacco among his male acquaintance in the village of Fendyke--a village consisting of a rectory, three picturesque farmhouses, a still more picturesque water-mill and miller's house, a roomy old barn-like inn, said to have once given shelter to good Queen Bess, and a good many decent cottages grouped in threes and fours along the broad, level road, or scattered in side lanes.