Stella herself had not the least suspicion of her Romany descent. Not a servant remaining at the Chase had seen the first Lady Cranstoun, or knew aught of her beyond a brief record in the local papers of her death, eighteen years ago, with the one exception of Margaret. And even Margaret knew very little. Only that on the thirteenth day of December, eighteen years ago, Dr. Ernest Netherbridge and two women had arrived at the Chase, immediately after a farmer’s cart had carried thither a certain bundle, from which feeble cries proceeded. For fully an hour the visitors were closeted with Sir Philip in his study, after which time they left in the carriage and were driven to Grayling railway station, where the two women entered a train for London. Three months later, at St. George’s, Hanover Square, Sir Philip Cranstoun was married to the Lady Gwendolen Douglas, daughter of the Duke of Lanark, a woman of no particular beauty and rather over thirty years of age. The following Christmas the second Lady Cranstoun gave birth to a girl, a weakly creature who, after a few days of wailing remonstrance, faded out of this life altogether. The mind of Lady Cranstoun, never of the strongest order, gave way under the strain; in the care of nurses she was taken by her husband to London, whence she returned in a few months’ time with a lovely dark-haired and blue-eyed baby girl whom she persisted in regarding as her own, in which belief was upheld by her husband, and by all those about her. Thus the infant child of Clare Carewe the gypsy made her second entry into the house of her ancestors, having been adopted in order to save her stepmother’s wandering wits. For years Sir Philip, after his wife’s complete recovery, hoped against hope that she might yet bring him an heir; but fate was against him, and the gypsy’s child was the only descendant he might now hope to possess. Against this daughter, lovely and intelligent as she proved herself to be, the Lord of Cranstoun Chase cherished a deep-rooted and immovable dislike, which showed itself in every glance that he directed toward her. The resemblance which she undoubtedly bore to the woman who had defied him and fled from him intensified this feeling a hundredfold, and the girl’s proud if silent rebellion against his harshness and unkindness was a perpetual reminder of the untamable spirit which she had inherited from her Romany ancestors.