the presence, of one who might in former years have been squire or feudatory, indeed, to some Lord or Lady of March, but who could never, in the wildest upheaval of King Henry’s time, have hoped to become the master of a Mortimer. Gundred had given her whole heart to her husband. But now, in the shadow of all her ancient selves, something began to thrill in her veins that was more than the mere pride of part-proprietorship in a splendid and historic house. An old house, soaked in all the personalities of a thousand bygone years, must needs retain the flavour and fragrance of them; and on one who in his own person resumes the lives of twenty generations, the compelling influence of his home, the scene and material of all those lives that throb again in his, must necessarily be so dominant that insensibly he takes the colour of the past by which he is surrounded. If this was so in the case of Kingston, hampered and controlled by all the decent ancestors that had lived and died unnoticeably in Darnley-on-Downe, it was likely that the effect would be far more obvious in the case of one whose own character was so neutral as Gundred’s, and whose ancestors were so terrific and blazing as the Mortimers. From every flagstone, from every wall, pressed out upon Gundred the influence of some masterful forefather; and in her quiet nature here and there a secret nerve or fibre, latent hitherto, and unsuspected, recognised the call of the soul in which it once had formed a part, and thrilled to life again. At Brakelond Gundred insensibly took the lead. It was she that decided to settle in the little ancient wooden wing that jutted away from the main mass of the Castle out upon the spur of cliff by the Chapel of King Mark. Her gentle manner grew more and more imbued with sovereignty, and her husband found himself now amused and now rebuffed by Gundred’s obvious sense of being at home. Away in London she might be anyone in general, or no one in particular, concealed her family pride in the Mortimers, was able to give her zeal for morality full sway in the condemnation of Queen Isabel. But at Brakelond her own individuality was swamped. Half reluctantly at first, but soon openly and even proudly, she began to contemplate the career of the wicked Queen, and exalted her with faint damnation that soon passed into positive sympathy. She spent her days unfolding to her husband all the nooks and secrets of the Castle. And, whereas normally she was a person of the most sensitive and neat-minded righteousness, hating fierce crimes, frigidly abominating love-intrigues, here in Brakelond her sense of right and wrong was in abeyance, and at times she canvassed old bloodstained stories with an unmoral calm, and a manner that admitted a not uncomplacent participation in their horrors.