will be curious to learn
what he has to say to you."

Whereupon, linked arm in arm, my father and I entered and made our way
to the breakfast room, where we seated ourselves, and were soon busy
with the viands placed before us. The letter to which my father had
referred lay beside my plate; and, having obtained his permission, I at
once broke the seal and glanced at its contents, for I was full of
curiosity to learn in detail the splendid news which my father had
outlined to me as he stood in the portico.

But before proceeding further with this veracious history it will be
well that I should say a word or two about myself, by way of formally
introducing myself as it were to the reader, in order that if he feels
inclined to follow my fortunes, as set forth in the following pages, he
may know just who I am and how matters were standing with me at the
moment when this story opens.

To begin, then, I was the only son of Sir Richard Delamere, of Delamere
Hall, in the county of Dorsetshire; Baronet, Justice of the Peace,
etcetera, etcetera, etcetera; and some sixteen and a half years before
the date at which this story starts I had received the name of Richard,
after my father, at the baptismal font in the fine old church in the
village of Delamere, that nestles snugly in the valley about a mile to
the north-eastward of the Hall.

I never knew my mother, for she died in giving me birth; and my father,
who adored her living, and revered her memory, was some years older
before he fully forgave me for being the unwitting cause of her
premature departure from this world. And in this I could sympathise
with him as soon as I came to years of understanding, for she was not
only, as everybody who had known her asserted, of a most amiable and
loveable disposition, but--as her portrait in the big library bore
witness--a most lovely woman.

But although I was unfortunate enough never to have known a mother's
love, I do not think I was actually very much the worse for the loss;
for upon my mother's death her place was most ably and conscientiously
filled by my aunt Griselda, my father's maiden sister, who faithfully
did her duty both by my father and me until she too passed away when I
was about eleven years old, by which time my father had completely
conquered his original resentment toward me, and we had become all that
father and son ought to be to each other.

Then, after receiving the best education that it was at that tim