Whether owing or not to the sturdy and independent spirit brought into the family on the side of his mother, a Pennsylvania heiress of old Puritan stock, certain it was that Claud Bromley Viscount Carthew was utterly unlike any other heir to an earldom in England. He was singularly free from vices, and unfashionable enough to be strictly honorable in paying his debts. He held the unusual opinion that it was as necessary and important to pay a tailor for a coat as a friend for a gambling debt. He also worked as hard for his exams as though he intended to be a parson or a schoolmaster, or as though a couple of letters after his name could be of any material value to a man who would some day be worth fifty thousand a year. His theories on marriage were also archaic in the extreme, in the opinion of his equals. He was anxious not only to marry a woman he loved, but a woman who loved him, and until she appeared on the scene he had not the slightest desire to amuse himself in the society of less estimable sirens. Music-halls bored him, and he had too much respect for his own intelligence to cloud it by drink. In field sports and out-door exercises he did not shine, but he liked them, and he heartily admired physical courage, strength, and endurance. Hilary Pritchard, the son of a Yorkshire “gentleman farmer” of very moderate means, had first attracted Lord Carthew’s attention by the ease with which he excelled in running, jumping, leaping, and “putting the stone.” Young Pritchard was as bad at study as he was admirable in athletics, and Lord Carthew was filled with enthusiasm by the evidences in him of just those qualities which he himself lacked. The farmer’s son’s disposition was also a happy foil to that of the Earl of Northborough’s heir. Hilary’s was in no sense an introspective, analytical, or self-torturing mind. He enjoyed life thoroughly in a simple and manly fashion, took people in general as he found them, was cautious in his friendships, shrewd in his judgments, strong and rooted in his rare loves and hates, and for the rest, a most cheery and optimistic companion, of untiring physical strength and unfailing good humor. For five years the two young men had been great friends; but a break was soon to come between them. It had been arranged in the Pritchard family that in the autumn of the year Hilary was to proceed to Canada, there to start farming on his own account on some land left to him by a relative. Almost at the same time the question of Lord Carthew’s marriage had been prominently discussed in the Earl of Northborough’s family circle, and Claud was well aware that his parents hoped to see it take place within the year, if only a suitable bride could be found.