As she swept slowly along the corridor, which overlooked the hall at Tallyn, none of the details of the house were lost upon her.

Tallyn was vast, ugly--above all, rich.

Henry Marsham, the deceased husband of Lady Lucy and father of Oliver and Mrs.
Fotheringham, had made an enormous fortune in the Iron Trade of the north, retiring at sixty that he might enjoy some of those pleasures of life for which business had left him too little time.

One of these pleasures was building.

Henry Marsham had spent ten years in building Tallyn, and at the end of that time, feeling it impossible to live in the huge incoherent place he had created, he hired a small villa at Nice and went to die there in privacy and peace.