Between the house and the tall back of the theatre lay the garden, in which a past Lord Liskeard with classical tastes had erected a model Grecian temple and a quantity of indifferent antique statuary, the fruits of his sojourn at the Embassy of Constantinople. In this garden, before dinner was served, a number of Sir Vernon’s guests had already gathered. The old man had been persuaded, despite the brilliant midsummer weather, to remain in the house; but Joan Cowper and John Prinsep were there to do the honours on his behalf. As Harry Lucas came into the garden, John Prinsep was laughingly, as he said, “showing off the points” of a dilapidated Hercules who, club, lion-skin and all, was slowly mouldering under the trees at one end of the lawn. The stone club had come loose, and Prinsep had taken it from the statue, and was playfully threatening to do classical execution with it upon the persons of his guests. Seeing Lucas, he put the club back into the broken hand of the statue, and came across the lawn to bid him welcome. “You’re the last to arrive, Mr. Lucas,” said he. “You see it’s quite a family affair this evening.” It was quite a family affair. Of the eight persons now on the lawn, six were members of the Brooklyn family by birth or marriage; Lucas was Sir Vernon’s oldest friend and collaborator; and young Ellery, the remaining member of the party, was Lucas’s ward, and was usually to be found, when he had his will, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Joan Cowper. As Sir Vernon had fully made up his mind that Joan was to marry Prinsep, and there was supposed to be some sort of engagement between them, Ellery’s attentions were not welcome to Prinsep, and there was no love lost between the two men.