Chapter 1

Wiltstoken Castle was a square building with circular bastions at
the corners, each bastion terminating skyward in a Turkish minaret.
The southwest face was the front, and was pierced by a Moorish arch
fitted with glass doors, which could be secured on occasion by gates
of fantastically hammered iron. The arch was enshrined by a
Palladian portico, which rose to the roof, and was surmounted by an
open pediment, in the cleft of which stood a black-marble figure of
an Egyptian, erect, and gazing steadfastly at the midday sun. On the
ground beneath was an Italian terrace with two great stone elephants
at the ends of the balustrade. The windows on the upper story were,
like the entrance, Moorish; but the principal ones below were square
bays, mullioned. The castle was considered grand by the illiterate;
but architects and readers of books on architecture condemned it as
a nondescript mixture of styles in the worst possible taste. It
stood on an eminence surrounded by hilly woodland, thirty acres of
which were enclosed as Wiltstoken Park. Half a mile south was the
little town of Wiltstoken, accessible by rail from London in about
two hours.

Most of the inhabitants of Wiltstoken were Conservatives. They stood
in awe of the castle; and some of them would at any time have cut
half a dozen of their oldest friends to obtain an invitation to
dinner, or oven a bow in public, from Miss Lydia Carew, its orphan
mistress. This Miss Carew was a remarkable person. She had inherited
the castle and park from her aunt, who had considered her niece's
large fortune in railways and mines incomplete without land. So many
other legacies had Lydia received from kinsfolk who hated poor
relations, that she was now, in her twenty-fifth year, the
independent possessor of an annual income equal to the year's
earnings of five hundred workmen, and under no external compulsion
to do anything in return for it. In addition to the advantage of
being a single woman in unusually easy circumstances, she enjoyed a
reputation for vast learning and exquisite culture. It was said in
Wiltstoken that she knew forty-eight living languages and all dead
ones; could play on every known musical instrument; was an
accomplished painter, and had written poetry. All this might as well
have been true as far as the Wiltstokeners were concerned, since she
knew more than they. She had spent her life travelling with her
father, a man of active mind and bad digestion, with a taste for
sociology, science in general, and the fine arts. On these subjects
he had written books, by which he had earned a considerable
reputation as a critic and philosopher. They were the outcome of
much reading, observation of men and cities, sight-seeing, and
theatre-going, of