But very few carriages have driven in or out during the last two years, except those of the owner of Barford Manor, Wentworth Maine.

Wentworth, since he inherited the place from his uncle five years ago, had always led a somewhat secluded life.

But during the last two years, ever since his half-brother, Michael, had been sentenced and imprisoned in Italy, Wentworth had withdrawn himself even more from the society of his neighbours.

He continued to shoot and hunt, and to do his duties as a magistrate and as a supporter of the Conservative party, but his thin, refined face had a certain worn, pinched look, which spoke of long tracts of solitary unhappiness.

And the habit of solitude was growing on him.
The old Manor House, standing in its high-walled gardens, its sunny low rooms looking out across the down, seemed wrapped in an atmosphere of ancient peace, which consorted as ill with the present impression of the place as does old Gobelin tapestry with a careful modern patch upon its surface.