occupation:  they may even have felt that they were bound in no common degree to the pursuit of an answer to what may be called the parent question of humanity:  Am I thy master, or thou mine?  They put it to lords of other castles, to town corporations, and sometimes brother to brother:  and notwithstanding that the answer often unseated and once discastled them, they swam back to their places, as born warriors, urged by a passion for land, are almost sure to do; are indeed quite sure, so long as they multiply sturdily, and will never take no from Fortune.  A family passion for land, that survives a generation, is as effective as genius in producing the object it conceives; and through marriages and conflicts, the seizure of lands, and brides bearing land, these sharp-feeding eagle-eyed earls of Romfrey spied few spots within their top tower’s wide circle of the heavens not their own.

It is therefore manifest that they had the root qualities, the prime active elements, of men in perfection, and notably that appetite to flourish at the cost of the weaker, which is the blessed exemplification of strength, and has been man’s cheerfulest encouragement to fight on since his comparative subjugation (on the whole, it seems complete) of the animal world.  By-and-by the struggle is transferred to higher ground, and we begin to perceive how much we are indebted to the fighting spirit.  Strength is the brute form of truth.  No conspicuously great man was born of the Romfreys, who were better served by a succession of able sons.  They sent undistinguished able men to army and navy—­lieutenants given to be critics of their captains, but trustworthy for their work.  In the later life of the family, they preferred the provincial state of splendid squires to Court and political honours.  They were renowned shots, long-limbed stalking sportsmen in field and bower, fast friends, intemperate enemies, handsome to feminine eyes, resembling one another in build, and mostly of the Northern colour, or betwixt the tints, with an hereditary nose and mouth that cried Romfrey from faces thrice diluted in cousinships.

The Hon. Everard (Stephen Denely Craven Romfrey), third son of the late Earl, had some hopes of the title, and was in person a noticeable gentleman, in mind a mediaeval baron, in politics a crotchety unintelligible Whig.  He inherited the estate of Holdesbury, on the borders of Hampshire and Wilts, and espoused that of Steynham in Sussex, where he generally resided.  His favourite in the family had been the Lady Emily, his eldest sister, who, contrary to the advice of her other brothers and sisters, had yielded her hand to his not wealthy friend, Colonel Richard Beauchamp.  After the death of Nevil’s parents, he adopted the boy, being himself childless, and a widower.  Childlessness was the affliction of the family.  Everard, having no son, could hardly hope that his brother the Earl, and Craven, Lord Avonley, would have one, for he loved the prospect of the title.