At first, the happy pair travelled about from one race meeting to another, enjoying an atmosphere of continual and stimulating excitement. In winter, they went abroad, returning in time for the first Spring Meeting. After a few years of a gay and rambling existence, came much harassing anxiety, rumours of serious troubles about racing and gambling debts; these rumours were followed by the sudden death of Sir Teddy Rashleigh. An overdose of sulphonal, taken by mistake (his creditors had their own opinions as to the ‘mistake’), and his widow found herself at the age of twenty-eight, with the miserable remains of a large fortune, and alienated from all her friends. During her married life, she had acquired extravagant and reckless tastes, gambled, betted, and plunged--and oh, how she hated poverty! Fortunately, she and her brother had always been chums, and he now came so generously to her assistance, that most of her world believed Lady Rashleigh to be not only a gay, but wealthy widow. She was loud, good-natured, and plain; a big woman, with high, square shoulders, quantities of coarse brown hair (dyed red), a broad, shrewd face, redeemed by a set of flashing white teeth. Men called her “a rare good sort, and as clever as they make them,” meaning that Lady Rashleigh, knew her world thoroughly, and contrived, whilst keeping on bowing terms with Mrs. Grundy, to enjoy a remarkably festive time. Meanwhile Hugo, his own master for many years, had been engaged in sowing wild oats, and seeing life. His mother had taken her departure from Sharsley; this severance had been a heart-breaking business, but Hugo’s manners and customs, and Hugo’s associates, were altogether too much for that delicate, decorous, and mid-Victorian matron. Instead of family prayers, and breakfast at nine o’clock, Hugo’s lady guests appeared at midday. They smoked, talked slang, discussed the latest odds, the latest scandals, and more or less ignored their old-fashioned hostess; the men were even worse: a gambling, hard-drinking, horsy crew; so Mrs. Blagdon went away to Cannes, and established herself in a splendid villa, far aloof from her unsatisfactory and unfilial children.