He was said to be wonderfully handsome, a great scholar--he had taken a double first at college; a great athlete--he had been captain of the Oxford boat at the University race; a very promising speaker who had already made his mark in the House of Lords; a sportsman who had shot tigers and other large game in India; a poet who had published a successful volume of verse under a pseudonym; a good solider until he left the Service; and lastly, a man of enormous wealth, owning, in addition to his estates, several coal mines and an entire town in the north of England.
"Dear me!" I said when the list was finished, "he seems to have been born with a whole case of gold spoons in his mouth.

I hope one of them will not choke him," adding: "Perhaps he will be unlucky in love." "That's just where he is most lucky of all," answered the young lady to whom I was talking--it was Scroope's fiancee, Miss Manners--"for he is engaged to a lady that, I am told, is the loveliest, sweetest, cleverest girl in all England, and they absolutely adore each other." "Dear me!" I repeated.

"I wonder what Fate _has_ got up its sleeve for Lord Ragnall and his perfect lady-love ?" I was doomed to find out one day.
So it came about that when, on the following morning, I was asked if I would like to see the wonders of Ragnall Castle, I answered "Yes." Really, however, I wanted to have a look at Lord Ragnall himself, if possible, for the account of his many perfections had impressed the imagination of a poor colonist like myself, who had never found an opportunity of setting his eyes upon a kind of human angel.

Human devils I had met in plenty, but never a single angel--at least, of the male sex.

Also there was always the possibility that I might get a glimpse of the still more angelic lady to whom he was engaged, whose name, I understood, was the Hon.