There was an excellent housekeeper, one who had been at Ulverston Priory for many years.
"You will be able to give some good dinner-parties," she said to her son; "bachelor dinners--bien entender--for Mrs.Richards is an excellent housekeeper." Assured and satisfied that all would go well, she left London.

She hesitated as to whether she should give her son any warning about love or marriage, then decided that it would be quite useless.
"The boy is naturally so fastidious and refined," she thought; "he will never love beneath him.

He will see no one so nice as Marion." So Lady Hildegarde Carruthers went to her stately home, little dreaming of the fatal news that was to follow her.
Basil cared little for the fashions and frivolities of the day; Colonel Mostyn tried to laugh him out of his romantic and chivalrous ideas.
"You are behind the age, Basil--quite unfit for it," he would say to him.

"Chevalier Bayard would not be appreciated in these times." He listened with a smile on his face, while the young man talked of something to do--some grand action to fill up his life, some heroic deed with which to crown himself.
"Utopian, Basil--all those are Utopian ideas.

Progress is the order of the day." "Is there nothing ?" asked Basil, "no way in which a man may distinguish himself after the fashion of the heroes of old ?" The colonel smiled sarcastically.
"My dear boy," he said, "between ourselves, some of those heroes of yours were unmitigated ruffians, I hardly like to give utterance to such a sentiment, yet I believe it.