or estates, and so his
education was entirely foreign, his tutors being M. Chatillon, and a
priest named Lefevre. As time wore on, it became evident that Mr. James
Tichborne would in due course become Sir James, and he felt it his
duty to secure to his son an English education. This the mother
opposed most strenuously, and it was only by artifice that the boy was
brought to England. Sir Henry Joseph Tichborne, who had succeeded to
the baronetcy in 1821, had no son, and though time after time a child
was born to him, Providence blessed him with no male heir. Again and
again a child would be born at Tichborne, but it was always a girl.
Sir Henry had seven children, of whom six lived, all celebrated for
their good looks, and their tall and handsome proportions; but all
were daughters. Still there was Sir Henry's brother, Edward
Tichborne, who had taken large estates under the will of a Miss
Doughty--which led to the present junction of the Doughty and
Tichborne properties, and to the double surname--and with them had
assumed the name of that lady, and he was after Sir Henry the next
heir. Edward had a son and daughter. But one day there came the news
to James and his wife in France, that Sir Edward's little boy had
died, and then it was that the father perceived more clearly the error
that he had made in permitting Roger to grow up ignorant of English
habits and the English tongue. Edward Doughty was an old man. His
brother James Tichborne himself was growing in years. The prospect of
Roger one day becoming the head of the old house of Tichborne, which
had once been so remote, had now become almost a certainty. It would
not do for the Lord of Tichborne to be a Frenchman; sooner or later he
must learn English, and receive an education fitting him to take the
position which now appeared in store for him. All this was clear
enough to Mr. James, but not so clear to his weak-headed and prejudiced
wife. The father did, indeed, obtain her consent to take the boy over
to England, and let him see his uncle and aunt, the Doughtys, at
Upton, in Dorsetshire, and his uncle, Sir Henry, at the ancestral home
down in Hampshire. But Roger was then but a child, and as he grew
older Mrs. Tichborne became more than ever resolute in her
determination that, come what might, her darling should be a
Frenchman. What cared she for the old Hampshire traditions? France was
to her the only land worth living in; a Frenchman's life was the only
life wor