It was one of the most charming houses ever seen, nestling in lovely grounds, amidst rising trees of many species. A modern house, built by its present owner, Isaac St. John, who possessed a rare taste for the beautiful, and had made it exquisite. That house was his hobby in life; his care was his half-brother, Frederick St. John. The estate of Castle Wafer was the entailed inheritance of these St. Johns; and Frederick was heir presumptive: the positive heir, said the world; for it was beyond the range of probability that its present owner would ever marry. They were second-cousins to the St. Johns of Alnwick, and were next in succession. Of great wealth themselves, far more so than was George St. John, and of more note in the world, they were yet below him in succession to what might be called the original family property. That was not Alnwick. An old baronet of eighty-one, Sir Thomas St. John, held it; he was childless, and therefore it would come at his death to George St. John, and to George St. John's sons after him. Had he, George St. John, also been childless, the whole, including the title, including Alnwick, would lapse to Isaac St. John. George St. John had nearly a two-mile drive. He noted the familiar points on the road and in the fine landscape, as they stood out in the clear but not very bright February day. The sprinkling of cottages near Castle Wafer; the solitary public-house, called the Barley Mow, with its swinging sign-board; and the old-fashioned red-brick house, Lexington Rectory, which the wiseacres of other days had built nearly two miles from its church and Lexington proper. It stood close to the grounds of Castle Wafer; was the only house of any social standing very near to it; and as George St. John glanced at its windows as he passed, he remembered that its present possessor had received his title to orders from a church in the neighbourhood of Alnwick, of which his father was patron; but he had been a very, very little boy at the time. The house looked empty now; its windows were nearly all closed: and he supposed its incumbent, Dr. Beauclerc, Rector of Lexington and Dean of Westerbury, was away at his deanery. "Mr. St. John is at home?" he asked, as the woman came out to throw back the lodge gates. "Oh yes, sir." And indeed George St. John had little need to ask, for Mr. St. John rarely, very rarely, was away from Castle Wafer.