Of all this accumulated history Gundred was, as it were, the sum and incarnation. The Castle, village of unconnected houses though it was in reality, yet had a collective personality of its own, even as a crowd of unrelated human beings has a collective personality beyond and above that of a mere aggregation of units. And she, its daughter and heiress, was also its result. It is written that neither man nor woman can ever escape from his or her traditions. The traditions are the character, and we are the reincarnated spirits of very many dead ages. As sunlight brings out all manner of unguessed possibilities from the innocent blank photographic plate, so the influence of Brakelond on the last child of its history must bring out in her nature new moods and unguessed colours of mind that had lain dormant in the undistinguishing atmosphere of London. And thus Brakelond could not but set a distinction between Kingston and Gundred. Between the flaming memories of Brakelond and the long, quiet, eventless story of Darnley-on-Downe there must always be a great and significant difference. Gundred, gentle, unimpassioned, mild and calm, was yet the daughter of fighting centuries, of men and women who had lived, suffered, loved and died magnificently, flamboyantly, full in the eye of the world. She was the daughter of a ruling race. And he, emotional, energetic, ambitious, was sprung from an interminable line of sterling, honest mediocrities. Great glories, great sorrows had avoided Darnley-on-Downe; the crashing crises in the House of Mortimer had no parallel in the long unchronicled history of the Dadds. No more than his wife could he escape from his traditions. And those traditions, well-bred, decent, honest though they were, yet were not the traditions of a ruling race. Inconspicuousness was their keynote. And Kingston found himself an alien in the citadel of the dead Mortimers. Their ghosts, insolent, gorgeous, tyrannous, looked down with contempt on the colourless shadows of all the sober Dadds. Those ghosts had ruled, in their great day, over counties of Dadds, over legions of good honest gentlemen of coat-armour who had been glad and proud to take service under the banner of the Mortimers. The House of March, perpetually struggling for sovereignty, had drawn to its service squires and knights innumerable from all the counties that it ruled. And the sense of feudal over-lordship was strong in the inherited blood of the Mortimers, even to the uttermost generation. Those others, those lesser people, noble and gentle, were but small and insignificant in the eyes of men and women who had violently swayed the destinies of England. They were loyal subjects, those others, perhaps, but equals and allies never. And now a man of the obscure order was lawful possessor of the last Mortimer. Queens and the sons of Kings had been, in old days, the mates of Brakelond; and the Castle seemed as if it could never accustom itself to the formal ownership, even to