When finally the plans were arranged to our liking, and we could think of nothing more, we called the architect to go on with the work; but now some two years had gone by, so much time had it taken to locate and plan the structure to our liking. At last, just before my twentieth birthday, the whole was turned over to me complete. Then, not waiting for furnishings, but calling on Mr. Seymour, and he bringing every needed thing, we celebrated the event with a dinner, and afterward a great ball, to which all the people of Appletop and thereabouts were invited. This last was thought to be a great event, and to surpass by far anything of the kind ever before attempted in the new country. Certainly it passed off with great spirit; and one of the things that pleased me most about it was having the Haywards and Blakes to stay with me during the week of the celebration. Now, being free and the house in readiness, Constance and I began to talk more seriously of our marriage, but still as a thing some way off. Not, indeed, that we thought it needful to wait till I was of age, but being separated by only a step a few days more or less did not so much matter. Thus it would have turned out, except for the most surprising and unheard-of thing that happened just at this time, and that was the need that arose for Mr. Seymour’s immediate return to England. For, so it appeared, he was not the obscure Englishman we all had thought, but the son of a great lord; and now, his two elder brothers dying without issue, and his father being already dead, he had come into the title and estate, and so must return to his own home. Of his coming to America, and the reason therefor, it appeared, so the story ran, that when a young man and hot-headed, being greatly disheartened and angered by the obstacles his father placed in the way of his union with the lady of his choice, he had married her whether or no, and gathering together all his belongings, had come to this country, and finally to Little Sandy and the Dragon, as you know. Of all this I had not a hint till one afternoon when Constance and her father were to dine with me, and she, coming early, told me the story as I have related. "Surely you have known before to-day that your father was the son of a nobleman?" I answered, when she had finished, surprised out of my senses at what she said. "Not always, but since we came to Appletop," she answered. "As long ago as that, Constance, and you have never said a word about it to me! Do you think it was quite generous to keep it back?" I asked, in some humiliation that I should have been kept in the dark about so important a matter. "What good would it have done, Gilbert? You knew us as we are, and was that not enough? What difference did his being the younger son of a lord make?" "I don’t know; but have you not known he was to fall heir to the title?" I asked, bewildered. "Not certainly till to-day, though it has been likely these four years."