THE lovely young Mrs. Hilary—she was well worthy of her beautiful Christian names, Jean Madeline—was not exactly an old man's darling, as her husband, Colonel Basil Hilary, was well on the right side of fifty. He was, however, five and twenty years older than she, and when, in her twenty-second year and within twelve months of their marriage, she presented him with a son and heir, he declared himself to be one of the happiest men alive. Certainly he ought to have been a contented one, for, apart from his beautiful young wife and baby, he was in perfect health, of ample means, and the proud possessor of many hundreds of acres of good and fertile land in the county of Norfolk.