n had long since
forgotten him. Only an old friend or two and his old servants remembered
what he had been, his virtues, his magnificence, his kindness, and his
weakness.

But if the Seagrave twins possessed neither father nor mother to
exercise tender temporal and spiritual suzerainty in the nursery, and if
no memory of their grandfather's adoring authority remained, the last
will and testament of Anthony Seagrave had provided a marvellous,
man-created substitute for the dead: a vast, shadowy thing which ruled
their lives with passionless precision; which ordered their waking hours
even to the minutest particulars; which assumed machine-like charge of
their persons, their personal expenses, their bringing-up, their
schooling, the items of their daily routine.

This colossal automaton, almost terrifyingly impersonal, loomed always
above them, throwing its powerful and gigantic shadow across their
lives. As they grew old enough to understand, it became to them the
embodiment of occult and unpleasant authority which controlled their
coming and going; which chose for them their personal but not their
legal guardian, Kathleen Severn; which fixed upon the number of servants
necessary for the house that Anthony Seagrave directed should be
maintained for his grandchildren; which decided what kind of expenses,
what sort of clothing, what recreations, what accomplishments, what
studies, what religion they should be provided with.

And the name of this enormous man-contrived machine which took the place
of father and mother was the Half Moon Trust Company, acting as trustee,
guardian, and executor for two little children, who neither understood
why they were sometimes very unruly or that they would one day be very,
very rich.

As for their outbreaks, an intense sense of loneliness for which they
were unable to account was always followed by a period of restlessness
sure to culminate in violent misbehaviour.

Such an outbreak had been long impending. So when a telegram called away
their personal guardian, Kathleen Severn, the children broke loose with
the delicate fury of the April tempest outside, which all the morning
had been blotting the western windows with gusts of fragrant rain.

The storm was passing now; light volleys of rain still arrived at
intervals, slackening as the spring sun broke out, gilding naked
branches and bare brown earth, touching swelling buds and the frail
points of tulips which pricked the soaked