ry persons without question looked up to them.

The Allertons made the grand tour in a style befitting their dignity;
and the letters which each son of the house wrote in turn, describing
Paris, Vienna, Dresden, Munich, and Rome, with the persons of
consequence who entertained him, were preserved with scrupulous care
among the family papers. They testified to an agreeable interest in the
arts; and each of them had made a point of bringing back with him,
according to the fashion of his day, beautiful things which he had
purchased on his journey. Hamlyn's Purlieu, a fine stone house goodly to
look upon, was thus filled with Italian pictures, French cabinets of
delicate workmanship, bronzes of all kinds, tapestries, and old Eastern
carpets. The gardens had been tended with a loving care, and there grew
in them trees and flowers which were unknown to other parts of England.
Each Allerton in his time cherished the place with a passionate pride,
looking upon it as his greatest privilege that he could add a little to
its beauty and hand on to his successor a more magnificent heritage.

* * *

But at length Hamlyn's Purlieu came into the hands of Fred Allerton; and
the gods, blind for so long to the prosperity of this house, determined
now, it seemed, to wreak their malice. Fred Allerton had many of the
characteristics of his race, but in him they took a sudden turn which
bore him swiftly to destruction. They had been marked always by good
looks, a persuasive manner, and a singular liberality of mind; and he
was perhaps the handsomest, and certainly the most charming of them all.
But the freedom from prejudice which had prevented the others from
giving way too much to their pride had in him degenerated into a
singular unscrupulousness. His parents died when he was twenty, and a
year later he found himself master of a great estate. The times were
hard then for those who depended upon their land, and Fred Allerton was
not so rich as his forebears. But he flung himself extravagantly into
the pursuit of pleasure. He was the only member of his family who had
failed to reside habitually at Hamlyn's Purlieu. He seemed to take no
interest in it, and except now and then to shoot, never came near his
native county. He lived much in Paris, which in the early years of the
third republic had still something of the wanton gaiety of the Empire;
and here he soon grew notorious for his prodigality and his adventures.
He was an unlucky man, an