"
The new owner of Threlfall Tower was standing in the drawing-room with
his back to the fire, alternately looking about him with an eager
curiosity, and rubbing his hands in what appeared to be satisfaction. The
agent surveyed him.
Edmund Melrose at that moment--some thirty years ago--was a tall and
remarkably handsome man of fifty, with fine aquiline features deeply
grooved and cut, a delicate nostril, and a domed forehead over which fell
thick locks of black hair. He looked what he was--a man of wealth and
family, spoilt by long years of wandering and irresponsible living,
during which an inherited eccentricity and impatience of restraint had
developed into traits and manners which seemed as natural to himself as
they were monstrous in the sight of others. He had so far treated the
agent with the scantest civility during their progress through the house;
and Tyson's northern blood had boiled more than once.
But the inspection of the house had apparently put its owner in a good
temper, and he seemed to be now more genially inclined. He lit a
cigarette and offered Tyson one. Upstairs the child could be heard
wailing. Its mother and nurse were no doubt ministering to it. Mrs.
Melrose, so far as Tyson had observed her arrival, had cast hasty and
shivering looks round the comfortlessness of the hall and drawing-room;
had demanded loudly that some of the cases encumbering the hall and
passages should be removed or unpacked at once, and had then bade Mrs.
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