After this, Broome saw little of its master except at infrequent intervals. His visits rarely lasted longer than a fortnight at a time, after which he would be off again, either to London, or to the country house of one or another of his many friends. Meanwhile, Lady Pengarvon vegetated from year end to year end in the gloomy old house, seeing scarcely any company and rarely going from home, bringing up her daughters, giving sparingly to the poor, and being exercised in her mind for weeks before she ventured on the extravagance of ordering a new gown. All this time no heir male came to gladden his parents' hearts. Sir Jasper felt himself to be a deeply injured man, while his wife pined in secret and shut herself up from the world more closely than ever. The Baronet had not been idle all this time. He had been doing his best, with the aid of the gaming-table, to dissipate the broad acres which had come down to him from a dozen generations of thrifty ancestors. It was a pleasant life, but unfortunately it couldn't last for ever. The end came when his eldest daughter was seventeen years old. His own fortune, his wife's fortune, the proceeds of the sale of every acre of land and every foot of timber that he had the power to sell had slipped through his fingers as easily as water through a sieve, till nothing was left save the old house of Broome, with a few acres of sparsely-timbered land about it, together with two small farms of the rental value of eighty pounds a year each, which it was not in the Baronet's power to touch. Beyond that the ruin was complete. It was when affairs had come to this pass that Lady Pengarvon took it into her head to die. Her husband admitted that, under the circumstances, it was the most sensible thing she could have done. The poor lady was well out of her troubles. Hardly was the funeral over before the Baronet packed off his daughters to some of their mother's relatives, and shut up the house, after which nothing definite was known as to his movements for nearly three years. At the end of that time information came to hand that Sir Jasper Pengarvon was about to take to himself a second wife, in the person of the daughter of a rich London drysalter, with a fortune of twenty-five thousand pounds. The new Lady Pengarvon proved to be an unrefined, good-natured woman, who had probably been very pretty when she was a dozen years younger. Between her and the young ladies, her step-daughters, there was a great gulf, which they took care she should never overpass. She was their father's wife, and as such they treated her with civility and a certain amount of respect; but it was with a civility that chilled, and with a respect which seemed ever to imply, "We cannot rid ourselves of you, and consequently must tolerate you, bat don't look to us for anything more."