e San Francisco lease runs out shortly. Half of that, and the
southern ranch, are my only independent sources of income. The northern
ranch belongs to Jack. All three are getting less and less easy to let
in their entirety, my agents write me, and I feel half a pauper
already."

"This is not so bad," murmured Flora.

"Strathland would bundle me out in ten minutes if anything happened to
Jack."

"It would be a pity; it suits you." She was not referring to the hall,
which was somewhat too light and small for the heroic mould of its
chatelaine, but to the noble proportions of the old house itself, and
the treasures that had accumulated since the first foundations were laid
in the reign of Henry VI. There were rooms hung with ugly brocades and
velvets never duplicated, state bed-chambers and boudoirs sacred to the
memory of personages whose dust lay half-forgotten in their marbles; but
above all, Capheaton was famous for its pictures. Not only was there an
unusually large number of portraits by masters scattered about the
twenty rooms that lay behind and on either side of the hall, but many
hundreds of those portraits and landscapes from the brushes of artists
fashionable in their day, unknown in the annals of art, but seeming to
emit a faint scent of lavender and rose leaves from the walls of
England's old manor-houses and castles. In the dining-room there was a
full-length portrait of Mary Tudor, black but for the yellow face and
hands and ruff; and another, the scarlet coat and robust complexion
still fresh, of the fourth George, handsome, gay, devil-may-care; both
painted to commemorate visits to Capheaton, historically hospitable in
the past. But Lord Strathland, besides having been presented with six
daughters and an heir as extravagant as tradition demanded, was poor as
peers go, and had more than once succumbed to the titillating delights
of speculation, less cheering in the retrospect. Having a still larger
estate to keep up, he had been glad to lend Capheaton to his second son,
who, being an excellent manager and assisted by his wife's income, had
lived very comfortably upon its yield. Upon his death Elton Gwynne had
assumed possession as a matter of course; and a handsome allowance from
his doting grandfather supplementing his inheritance, the mind of the
haughty and promising young gentleman was free of sordid anxieties.

Lady Victoria's satirical gaze swept the simpering portraits of her
son's great-aunts a