‘Yes,’ replied her husband; ‘he chose a county as far away as possible from all his own people in Kent. They quarrelled with him when he married, and now none of them will have anything to do with us. So he thought when it came to settling down as a landed proprietor and all the rest of it--my mother’s pet fancy, that was--that he would go right away to the other corner of England. So now our own family, the Dadds, are still sitting in Darnley-on-Downe, watching the coal-pits that support the head of the clan at the other end of the country. It is a quaint irony.’ ‘Haven’t you any exciting possibilities among your relations?’ asked Isabel, turning to him. ‘They sound a little stodgy, to say nothing of the fact that they have all cut you.’ ‘Well, there is a mystery, I believe. An uncle, a brother of my father’s, who ran away to Japan, and is now a Buddhist Abbot or Bishop, or something of the kind. But for all the excitement one is ever likely to get out of him, he might as well never have been born. He is twelve thousand miles away, and we shall probably never set eyes on him again.’ Gundred looked a little pained, and made haste to divert the conversation from this irreligious topic, just as Isabel was about to burst out into enthusiastic curiosity. ‘So Mr. Darnley bought this delightful estate in Yorkshire, and there is no use thinking of unpleasant things in the past. Nothing could sound nicer than Ivescar. Describe it, Kingston.’ ‘Oh, well, it sits right up among the fells and moors, just under one of the big mountains, in a tiny little bare glen all of its own. It is a stern, splendid country, very large and stiff and barren, up at Ivescar, and then, down below, there is a great fat valley, all smooth and smiling, that rolls away westward to the sea. There are jolly rivers and waterfalls all about in the hills, too, and wonderful caves and crevasses and pitfalls. It’s quite unlike anything else in England, and it grows on one in the most extraordinary way. There is something very primeval and mysterious about it.’ ‘And capital shooting,’ added Gundred. ‘Such nice moors, they tell me, Isabel. We will go up and have lunch with the guns as often as we can--yes?’ ‘Yes, the moors are gorgeous,’ said Kingston. ‘I don’t shoot myself; I have given it up. But the moors are certainly gorgeous. One can lose one’s self on them for hours, and probably fall into potholes and things.’ ‘Oh, you must take up your shooting again, dear,’ protested Gundred, who had the usual tender-hearted woman’s ambition that her husband should destroy innocent lives as lavishly and enthusiastically and successfully as fashion demands. ‘You must certainly take it up again. I do think it such a good thing for a man to have some interest in life, don’t you, Isabel--something for him to do in the country--yes?’ Isabel abruptly let this uninteresting development of the conversation lapse unanswered.