It was in the north, we say, where Mr. Christopher Tallant began life, and where the key-note of his career may be said to have been struck; but as a young man he had lived in the south-west of England, and had mastered the leading principles of trade and commerce in several great private and public works. He had proved himself an adept at legislative finance, at devising and carrying out great schemes; and at a comparatively early age he had raised himself to a position of commercial distinction and opulence. He had been twice married. His first union was an unhappy one. It was altogether a mysterious marriage, which had puzzled and astonished his friends at the time, as well it might; for without the smallest warning the young fellow had returned from a short visit to London with a handsome, dashing woman, whom he introduced as his wife. At this time he was manager of the Vulcan Forge Works on the Avon, twenty miles on the other side of a famous western city, and he had the _entrée_ to very respectable society. It was some time before the little local coterie forgave his sudden introduction of the unknown London wife. In a very short time he had reason to repent his rashness and folly. His wife indulged in all kinds of extravagance; she led the local fashions, she indulged in fast flirtations which set all the gossips in the neighbourhood upon her; finally, an unwomanly passion for drink set in, and after a few years of wretchedness she died, leaving behind her one child, a son, who will make a prominent figure in this history. The poor woman’s misconduct had but little impeded her husband’s worldly advances; he secured shares in several important patents; he became director of one or two companies; and started as an iron merchant on his own private account. At one time he held as his own property half the iron bars of a whole district. This was during a strike, after a period of great depression, and just before a time of sudden and unexpected activity. Well, by-and-by, in the course of half-a-dozen years, the iron merchant married again, and took his wife home to that beautiful country residence near Severntown, and beneath the shadow of Berne Hills. He had only purchased the estate the year before his marriage. His second wife, whom he had loved with a fervency characteristic of his earnest character, was the daughter of a nobleman, and an exceedingly handsome and lovable woman. She died in giving birth to her first child, who, like her half-brother, is one of the leading characters in this story.