en looked its best in late
autumn. The ripeness of the air, the wealth of colour, and the
harmonious dignity of the season seemed a fit setting to the old Tudor
mansion, with its reposeful beauty just touched with renaissance
grace. The glory of the world passes, but it is none the less a glory
worth observing.

The Astons regarded Marden as the metropolis of their affections. It
was "Home" and any member of the family wanting to go "Home" did so
regardless of who might be in immediate possession. Nevil Aston, his
wife and two small children and his young sister-in-law lived there
permanently, but their position was that of fortunate caretakers, and
both the elder Aston and the Wyatts went to and fro at their will.

Nevil Aston was at thirty-two a brilliant essayist and rising
historian, and there was a magnificent library at Marden which he
professed to find useful in his work. He also was wont to say "Marden
was an excellent place in which to work, but a far better place in
which to play." He himself did both in turn. A few weeks of furious
energy and copious achievement would be followed by weeks of serene
idleness from which little Renata, his wife, would arouse him by
sheer bullying, as he himself expressed it, driving him by main force
of will to the library, setting pen and paper to hand and then
placidly consenting to weeks of irregular meals, of absent-minded
vagaries, a seeming indifference to her presence, in place of the
wholly dependent lovable boyish Nevil of the days of indolence.

It was not till the second autumn after Christopher's introduction to
the menage that the senior Astons decided to desert London for a few
months and go "Home." Mr. Aston had been to and fro not infrequently
and Nevil Aston had made a few brief visits to town, when Constantia
Wyatt had made it her business to see that her gifted brother did not
hide his light under a bushel, but little Christopher failed to
connect either Nevil or his beautiful sister very closely with his own
particular Astons. They were a part of an outside existence with which
he was unacquainted, and Marden Court was to him but a name, an unreal
place that got photographed occasionally and that Mr. Aston seemed to
like. The Astons, probably quite unconsciously, pursued their usual
course of leaving Christopher to drift into the stream of their
existence without any explanation or attempt to make that existence a
clear cut and dried affair to him. He was