During his father's lifetime he had been in a cavalry regiment, and while serving in India, had taken part in a rather perilous frontier campaign against a strange set of tribesmen in the northwest. He had become greatly interested in the opening up of the conquered territory, and as soon as his father died he had left the regiment and had done some remarkable exploration work on his own account, both in the northwest of India and in the borderland of Persia. He returned to England to recover from the effects of a snake-bite, and to stay for a month or two with his brother, to whom he was deeply attached. But when in Brackenshire he had formed another attachment which threatened to interfere with the Future he had mapped out for himself as an explorer. He did not notice any change in his brother's demeanour the day he had gone to him confiding in him that he had fallen in love with Agnes Mowbray, the beautiful daughter of Admiral Mowbray, who had bought a small property known as The Knoll, a mile from the gates of the Court. Richard Westwood had found it necessary for the successful carrying on of the banking business, which he had inherited, to keep himself always well in hand. If his feelings were not invariably under control, his expression of those feelings certainly was so; and this was how it came that, after a pause of only a few seconds, he was able to offer his brother his hand and to say in a voice that was neither husky nor tremulous: “Dear old chap, you have all my good wishes.” “I knew that you would be pleased,” Claude had said. “She is the sort of girl one only meets once in a lifetime. I have lived for a good many years in the world now, and yet I never met any girl worthy of a thought alongside Agnes. How on earth you have remained in her neighbourhood for a year without falling in love with her yourself is a mystery to me.” A sudden flash came to Dick's eyes, and he was at the point of crying out, “Have I so remained?” But his usual habits of self-control prevented his showing to his brother what was in his heart He had merely given a laugh as he said: “I suppose it must always seem mysterious to a man in love that every one else in the world does not display symptoms of the same malady.” “I daresay you are right,” Claude had answered, after a pause. “Yes, I daresay--only--ah!--Agnes is very different from all the other girls in the world.” “You recollect Calverley's lines: “'I did not love as others do-- None ever did that I've heard tell of? Ah! you lovers are all cast in the same mould. But how about your projected exploration--you can scarcely expect her to rough it with you at the upper reaches of the Zambesi?”