“I have never made any secret of my wishes in this respect; but I have never told you the real reasons for my deep anxiety.  It was my father’s earnest hope—­he inherited it from his father, as I have from mine—­that the title might never be suffered to pass to his brother Anastasius’s heirs.  My uncle had married in direct opposition to his father’s orders, in an age when filial disobedience was deemed a very heinous offence, and he was cut off with a shilling.  I might say that he deserved no better; but he did not long survive to bear the penalty of his fault.  He left a child—­a daughter, however—­to whom I would willingly have lent a helping hand, but she spurned all my overtures in a way that grieved me greatly, although I never openly complained.  That branch of the family has continued estranged from us; and I am certainly indisposed to reopen communications with them.

“Yet the existence of that branch cannot be ignored.  It might, at any time, through any series of mishaps of a kind I hardly like to contemplate, but, nevertheless, quite possible in this world of cross-purposes and sudden surprises, become of paramount importance in the family; for in point of seniority it stands next to ourselves.  The next heir to the title, after you and your brothers, is the grandson of Anastasius Wilders, a lad of whom I know nothing, except that he is quite unfitted to assume the dignity of an Earl of Essendine, should fate ever will it that he should succeed.  This unfitness you will readily appreciate when I tell you that he is at present a private soldier in a marching-regiment in the East.  Stranger still, this regiment is the same as that in which poor Anastasius is serving—­the Royal Picts.  The young man’s name is McKay—­Stanislas Anastasius Wilders McKay.  I have never seen him; but I am satisfied of his existence, and of the absolute validity of his claims.  My agents have long had their eye on him, and through them I have full information of his movements and disposition.  He appears a decent, good sort of youth.  But I feel satisfied that we ought, as far as is possible by human endeavour, to prevent his becoming the head of the family.

“You are now in possession of the whole of the facts, my dear Lydstone, and I need scarcely insist upon the way in which you are affected by them.  You will not hesitate, I am sure, after reading this letter, to return to England the moment you can leave your poor brother.”

There was more in the letter, but it dealt with purely business matters, which did not interest the person who had become clandestinely possessed of it.

To say that Mrs. Wilders read this letter with surprise would inadequately express its effect upon her.  She was altogether taken aback, dismayed, horror-stricken at its contents.

Now, when chance, or something worse, had cleared the way towards the great end, after which she had always eagerly, but almost hopelessly, hankered, a new and entirely unexpected obstacle suddenly supervened.