Who shall presume to scrutinize the judgments, or pry into the secrets
of the Inscrutable?

This much alone is certain, that ere he was gathered to his fathers,
Allan Fitz-Henry might, and that not unjustly, have termed himself
that, which now, in the very wantonness of pampered and insatiate
success he swore that he was daily--the most unhappy of the sons of
men.

For to calamities so dreadful as might have disturbed the reason of
the strongest minded, remorse was added, so just, so terrible, so
overwhelming, that men actually marveled how he lived on and was not
insane.

But I must not anticipate.

It was a short time after the failure of the Duke of Monmouth's weak
and ungrateful attempt at revolution, a short time after the
conclusion of the merciless and bloody butcheries of that disgrace to
the English ermine, the ferocious Jefferies, that the incidents
occurred, which I learned first on the evening subsequent to my
discovery in the fatal summer-house.

At this time Allan Fitz-Henry--it was a singular proof, by the way, of
the hereditary pride of this old Norman race, that having numbered
among them so many friends and counsellors of monarchs, no one of
their number had been found willing to accept titular honors, holding
it a higher thing to be the premier gentleman than the junior peer of
England--At this time, I say, Allan Fitz-Henry was a man of some
forty-five or fifty years, well built and handsome, of courtly air and
dignified presence; nor must it be imagined that in his fancied
grievances he forgot to support the character of his family, or that
he carried his griefs abroad with him into the world.

At times, indeed, he might be a little grave and thoughtful,
especially at such times as he heard mention made of the promise or
success of this or that scion of some noble house; but it was only
within his own family circle, and to his most familiar friends, that
he was wont to open his heart, and complain of his ill-fortune, at
being the first childless father of his race--for so, in his contempt
for the poor girls, whom he still, strange contradiction! loved fondly
and affectionately, he was accustomed in his dark hours to style
himself; as if forsooth an heir male were the only offspring worthy to
be called the child of such a house.

Though he was fond, and gentle, and at times even tender to his
motherless daughters--for, to do him justice, he never suffered a
symptom of his disappointment