To enter into a history of the Harwood family at this period of our story would be too great a tax upon the reader, and it may be enough to say that this most respectable family had not been altogether so spotless as was supposed by the respectable inhabitants of St. John’s Wood. There was a break in the tradition, and that a very recent and important one. The husband of Mrs. Harwood and father of her children had been one of those bold speculators who often ruin whole communities. When a number of bubbles burst which he had been instrumental in blowing about the world it had been necessary for Mr. Adolphus Harwood to disappear; and he had done so, leaving but one feeling of pity for his wife and young children, and for his father--an old man, who was said to be bowed down to the dust by his son’s iniquities. After a while, though the interval was one of several years, information was received that he had died in Spain, and imperceptibly things mended for the family. His father being dead, Dolff became without any trouble the legitimate heir of the little entailed property upon which his grandfather lived, and the money matters of the house in general were cleared up, though I cannot explain how, having small knowledge of such subjects. It was found that Mrs. Harwood was not so badly off as had been supposed. She had some money of her own, which it was said formed the greater part of her living, and there were other resources of which nobody knew any particulars except, it is to be hoped, her man of business. She had at once rejected any quixotic notion of giving up what she had for herself and her children to satisfy the creditors of her husband. It would not have been enough to give them a pittance all round, and in the meantime she and her son and the girls would be added to the army of the destitute without doing anybody good. Some people think differently on such matters, but Mrs. Harwood had never wavered in her determination, and in general her conduct was at least not disapproved by her friends, who thought her an excellent woman of business and as full of integrity and steadiness as her husband had been the reverse. These things had happened when the children were very young, and they were now forgotten, save in the tenacious memories of a few who had suffered through the failure of Mr. Adolphus Harwood, and who did not fail to bear a certain grudge against his family. It had all taken place at a distance, in Liverpool, where his business was, and where failures and ruin are commonplace matters such as occur every day; and their home where old Mr. Harwood lived was in North Wales, far away from any communication with St. John’s Wood.