his laboratory to help him out.

All along there had been a certain love of the marvelous at the bottom
of his fancy for inventions. Therefore, though he did not in the least
believe in ghosts, he would "investigate" spiritualism, and part with
innumerable guineas to mediums, slatewriters, clairvoyants, and even of
turbaned rascals from the East, who would boldly offer at midnight to
bring him out into the back yard and there and then raise the devil for
him. And just as his tendency was to magnify the success and utility of
his patent purchases, so he would lend himself more or less to gross
impostures simply because they interested him. This confirmed his
reputation for being a bit of a crank; and as he had in addition all the
restlessness and eccentricity of the active spirits of his class,
arising from the fact that no matter what he busied himself with, it
never really mattered whether he accomplished it or not, he remained an
unsatisfied and (considering the money he cost) unsatisfactory specimen
of a true man in a false position.

Towers Cottage was supposed to be a mere appendage to Carbury Towers,
which had been burnt down, to the great relief of its noble owners, in
the reign of William IV. The Cottage, a handsome one-storied Tudor
mansion, with tall chimneys, gabled roofs, and transom windows, had
since served the family as a very sufficient residence, needing a much
smaller staff of servants than the Towers, and accommodating fewer
visitors. At first it had been assumed on all hands that the stay at the
Cottage was but a temporary one, pending the re-erection of the Towers
on a scale of baronial magnificence; but this tradition, having passed
through its primal stage of being a standing excuse with the elders
into that of being a standing joke with the children, had naturally
lapsed as the children grew up. Indeed, the Cottage was now too large
for the family; for the Earl was still unmarried, and all his sisters
had contracted splendid alliances except the youngest, Lady Constance
Carbury, a maiden of twenty-two, with a thin face and slight angular
figure, who was still on her mother's hands. The illustrious matches
made by her sisters had, in fact, been secured by extravagant dowering,
which had left nothing for poor Lady Constance except a miserable three
hundred pounds a year, at which paltry figure no man had as yet offered
to take her. The Countess (Dowager) habitually assumed that Marmaduke
Lind ard