horses down the drive, but once out on the
level road they trotted on briskly, with the grooms riding behind. They
formed quite a little cavalcade as they turned from the hard motor track
down the grassy lane where a dilapidated sign-post pointed to Ringfield
and Cheverley. It was a distance of seven good country miles from
Chilcombe Hall to Cheverley Chase, and, as the events of this story
center largely round Lilias and Dulcie, there will be ample time to
describe them while they are wending their way through the damp of the
misty December morning, up from the low-lying river level to the hill
country that stretched beyond.

Lilias was just sixteen, and very pretty, with gray eyes, fair hair, a
straight nose, and two bewitching dimples when she smiled. These dimples
were rather misleading, for they gave strangers the impression that
Lilias was humorous, which was entirely a mistake: it was Dulcie who was
the humorist in reality, Dulcie whose long lashes dropped over her shy
eyes, and who never could say a word for herself in public, though in
the society of intimate friends she could be amusing enough. Dulcie, at
fourteen, seemed years younger than Lilias; she did not wish to grow up
too soon, and thankfully tipped all responsibilities on to her elder
sister. Cousin Clare always said there were undiscovered depths in
Dulcie's character, but they were slow in development, and at present
she was a childish little person with a pink baby face, an affection for
fairy tales, and even a sneaking weakness for her discarded dolls. Life,
that to Lilias seemed a serious business, was a joyous venture to
Dulcie; she had a happy knack of shaking off the unpleasant things, and
throwing the utmost possible power of enjoyment into the nice ones. If
innocent happiness is the birthright of childhood, she clung to it
steadfastly, and had not yet exchanged it for the red pottage of worldly
wisdom.

Ever since Father and Mother, in the great disaster of the wreck of the
_Titanic_, had gone down together into the gray waters of the Atlantic,
the Ingleton children had lived with their grandfather, Mr. Leslie
Ingleton, at Cheverley Chase. There were six of them, Everard, Lilias,
Dulcie, Roland, Bevis, and Clifford, and as time passed on, and the
memory of that tragedy in mid-ocean grew faint, the Chase seemed as
entirely their home as if they had been born there. In Everard's
opinion, at any rate, it belonged to them, as it had always belo