tract the notice of
men. And after all what could it matter to him? He was not a marrying
man, and women as a class had little attraction for him; indeed he
disliked them. It has been said that he had never married, and never
even had a love affair since he was five-and-twenty. But though he was
not married, he once--before he was five-and-twenty--very nearly took
that step. It was twenty years ago now, and nobody quite knew the
history, for in twenty years many things are fortunately forgotten.
But there was a history, and a scandal, and the marriage was broken
off almost on the day it should have taken place. And after that it
leaked out in the neighbourhood that the young lady, who by the way
was a considerable heiress, had gone off her head, presumably with
grief, and been confined in an asylum, where she was believed still to
remain.

Perhaps it was the thought of this one woman's face, the woman he had
once seen walking down the drift, her figure limned out against the
stormy sky, that led him to think of the other face, the face hidden
in the madhouse. At any rate, with a sigh, or rather a groan, he swung
himself round from the gate and began to walk homeward at a brisk
pace.

The drift that he was following is known as the mile drift, and had in
ancient times formed the approach to the gates of Honham Castle, the
seat of the ancient and honourable family of de la Molle (sometimes
written "Delamol" in history and old writings). Honham Castle was now
nothing but a ruin, with a manor house built out of the wreck on one
side of its square, and the broad way that led to it from the high
road which ran from Boisingham,[*] the local country town, was a drift
or grass lane.

[*] Said to have been so named after the Boissey family, whose heiress
a de la Molle married in the fourteenth century. As, however, the
town of Boisingham is mentioned by one of the old chroniclers,
this does not seem very probable. No doubt the family took their
name from the town or hamlet, not the town from the family.

Colonel Quaritch followed this drift till he came to the high road,
and then turned. A few minutes' walk brought him to a drive opening
out of the main road on the left as he faced towards Boisingham. This
drive, which was some three hundred yards long, led up a rather sharp
slope to his own place, Honham Cottage, or Molehill, as the villagers
called it, a title calculated to give a keen impression of a neat