rid of us. She can play
her game better alone!"

"What is her game?" asked Adam unthinkingly.

"All the county knows it, my boy. Caswall is a very rich man. Her
husband was rich when she married him--or seemed to be. When he
committed suicide, it was found that he had nothing left, and the estate
was mortgaged up to the hilt. Her only hope is in a rich marriage. I
suppose I need not draw any conclusion; you can do that as well as I
can."

Adam remained silent nearly all the time they were travelling through the
alleged Vale of Cheshire. He thought much during that journey and came
to several conclusions, though his lips were unmoved. One of these
conclusions was that he would be very careful about paying any attention
to Lady Arabella. He was himself a rich man, how rich not even his uncle
had the least idea, and would have been surprised had he known.

The remainder of the journey was uneventful, and upon arrival at
Liverpool they went aboard the _West African_, which had just come to the
landing-stage. There his uncle introduced himself to Mr. Caswall, and
followed this up by introducing Sir Nathaniel and then Adam. The new-
comer received them graciously, and said what a pleasure it was to be
coming home after so long an absence of his family from their old seat.
Adam was pleased at the warmth of the reception; but he could not avoid a
feeling of repugnance at the man's face. He was trying hard to overcome
this when a diversion was caused by the arrival of Lady Arabella. The
diversion was welcome to all; the two Saltons and Sir Nathaniel were
shocked at Caswall's face--so hard, so ruthless, so selfish, so dominant.
"God help any," was the common thought, "who is under the domination of
such a man!"

Presently his African servant approached him, and at once their thoughts
changed to a larger toleration. Caswall looked indeed a savage--but a
cultured savage. In him were traces of the softening civilisation of
ages--of some of the higher instincts and education of man, no matter how
rudimentary these might be. But the face of Oolanga, as his master
called him, was unreformed, unsoftened savage, and inherent in it were
all the hideous possibilities of a lost, devil-ridden child of the forest
and the swamp--the lowest of all created things that could be regarded as
in some form ostensibly human. Lady Arabella and Oolanga arrived almost
simultaneously, and Adam was surprised to notice what effect thei