Eustace Cardoc, Viscount Miltoun, had lived a very lonely life, since he first began to understand the peculiarities of existence.

With the exception of Clifton, his grandmother's 'majordomo,' he made, as a small child, no intimate friend.

His nurses, governesses, tutors, by their own confession did not understand him, finding that he took himself with unnecessary seriousness; a little afraid, too, of one whom they discovered to be capable of pushing things to the point of enduring pain in silence.

Much of that early time was passed at Ravensham, for he had always been Lady Casterley's favourite grandchild.

She recognized in him the purposeful austerity which had somehow been omitted from the composition of her daughter.