Though it was picturesque it was not the most cheerful place in the world. The rooms were dark by reason of the huge carvings of the window frames and the shade of the trees, which last, perhaps, grew too near the house. The edifice contained no light, cheerful, sunny rooms, no wide large windows; the taste of the days in which it was built, led more toward magnificence than cheerfulness. Some additions had been made; the western wing of the building had been enlarged; but the principal apartments had remained unaltered; the stately, gloomy rooms in which the fair young princess had received and read the royal love-letters were almost untouched. The tall, spreading trees grew almost to the Hall door; they made the whole house dark and perhaps unhealthy. But no Vaughan ventured to cut them down; such an action would have seemed like a sacrilege. From father to son Queen's Chase had descended in regular succession. Sir Arthur, the present owner, succeeded when he was quite young. He was by no means of the genial order of men: he had always been cold, silent, and reserved. He married a lady more proud, more silent, more reserved than himself--a narrow-minded, narrow-hearted woman whose life was bounded by rigid law and formal courtesies, who never knew a warm or generous impulse, who lived quite outside the beautiful fairyland of love and poetry. Sir Arthur and Lady Vaughan had but one son, and though each idolized him, they could not change their nature; warm, sweet impulses never came to them. The mother kissed her boy by rule--at stated times; everything was measured, dated, and weighed. The boy himself was, strange to say, of a most hopeful, ardent, sanguine temperament; generous, high-spirited, slightly inclined to romance and sentiment. He loved and honored his father and mother, but the rigid formality of home was terrible to him; it was almost like death in life. Partly to escape it and partly because he really liked the life, he insisted on joining the army--much against Lady Vaughan's wishes. "Why could he not be content at home, as his father had been before him?" she asked. Captain Randall Vaughan enjoyed his brief military career. As a matter of course he fell in love, but far more sensibly than might have been imagined. He married the pretty, delicate Clare Brandon. She was an orphan, not very rich--in fact had only a moderate fortune--but her birth atoned for all. She was a lineal descendant of the famous Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, whom the fair young ex-queen of France had married.