Mr. Huntingdon was an ambitious man; he was more, he was a profound egotist. In his character pride, the love of power, the desire for wealth, were evenly balanced and made subservient to a most indomitable will. Those who knew him well said he was a hard self-sufficient man, one who never forgot an injury or forgave it. He had been the creator of his own fortunes; as a lad he had come to London with the traditional shilling in his pocket, and had worked his way to wealth, and was now one of the richest merchant princes in the metropolis. He had married a young heiress, and by her help had gained entrance into society, but she had died a dissatisfied, unhappy woman, who had never gained her husband's heart or won his confidence. In Mr. Huntingdon's self-engrossed nature there was no room for tenderness; he had loved his handsome young wife in a cool temperate fashion, but she had never influenced him, never really comprehended him; his iron will, hidden under a show of courtesy, had repressed her from the beginning of their married life. Perhaps her chief sin in his eyes had been that she had not given him a son; he had accepted his little daughter ungraciously, and for the first few years of her young life he had grievously neglected her. No mother; left by herself in that great house, with nurses to spoil her and servants to wait on her, the little creature grew up wayward and self-willed; her caprices indulged, her faults and follies laughed at or glossed over by careless governesses. Nea very seldom saw her father in those days; society claimed him when his business was over, and he was seldom at home. Sometimes Nea, playing in the square garden under the acacias, would look up and see a somber dark face watching her over the railings, but he would seldom call her to him; but, strange to say, the child worshiped him. When he rode away in the morning a beautiful little face would be peeping at him through the geraniums on the balcony, a little dimpled hand would wave confidingly. "Good-bye, papa," she would say in her shrill little voice, but he never heard her; he knew nothing, and cared little, about the lonely child-life that was lived out in the spacious nurseries of Belgrave House. But, thank Heaven, childhood is seldom unhappy. Nea laughed and played with the other children in the square garden; she drove out with her governess in the grand open carriage, where her tiny figure seemed almost lost. Nea remembered driving with her mother in that same carriage--a fair tired face had looked down on her smiling. "Mamma, is not Belgrave House the Palace Beautiful? look how its windows are shining like gold," she had said once.