the hall.

"I am going to see uncle Tom," she said, to her also.

Mrs. Miller always encouraged her children in their attentions to her
brother. He was rich, and he was a bachelor; he must have saved a good
deal one way or another. Who could tell how it would be left? And then
Beatrice was undoubtedly his favourite. She nodded pleasantly to her
daughter.

"Tell uncle Tom to come over to lunch on Sunday, and, of course, he must
come here early for Guy's birthday next week," for there were to be great
doings on Guy's birthday. "Ride slowly, Beatrice, or you will get so
hot."

Lutterton Castle was a good six miles off. The house stood well, and even
imposingly, on a high wooded knoll that overlooked the undulating park,
and the open valley at its feet. It was a great rambling building with a
central tower and four smaller ones at each corner. When Mr. Esterworth
was at home, which was almost always, it was his vanity to keep a red
flag flying from the centre tower as though he had been royalty. All the
reception-rooms and more than half the bedrooms were permanently
shuttered up, and there was a portly and very dignified housekeeper,
who rattled her keys at her chatelaine, and went through all the unused
apartments daily, followed by a meek phalanx of housemaids, to see that
all the rooms were well-aired and well kept in order, so that at any
minute they might be fit for occupation. Five or six times during the
hunting season the large rooms were all thrown open, and there was a hunt
breakfast held in the principal dining-hall; but, with that exception,
Mr. Esterworth rarely entertained at all.

He occupied three rooms opening out of each other in the small western
tower. They consisted of a bedroom, a dressing-room, and a small and
rather inconvenient study, where the huntsman, whips, and other official
personages connected with the hunt were received at all hours of the day
and night. The room was consequently pervaded by a faint odour of stables
and tobacco; there were usually three or four dogs upon the hearthrug,
and it was a rare thing to find Mr. Esterworth in it unaccompanied by
some personage in breeches and gaiters, wearing a blue spotted neckcloth
and a horseshoe pin.

Such an individual was receiving an audience at the moment of Miss
Miller's arrival, and shuffled awkwardly and hurriedly out of the room by
one door as she entered it by another.

"All right, William," calls the M.F.H. after his departing