While we were waiting for the reply, I made myself master of all the information Marian could afford on the subject of Sir Percival’s family, and of his early life.  She could only speak on these topics from hearsay, but she was reasonably certain of the truth of what little she had to tell.

Sir Percival was an only child.  His father, Sir Felix Glyde, had suffered from his birth under a painful and incurable deformity, and had shunned all society from his earliest years.  His sole happiness was in the enjoyment of music, and he had married a lady with tastes similar to his own, who was said to be a most accomplished musician.  He inherited the Blackwater property while still a young man.  Neither he nor his wife after taking possession, made advances of any sort towards the society of the neighbourhood, and no one endeavoured to tempt them into abandoning their reserve, with the one disastrous exception of the rector of the parish.

The rector was the worst of all innocent mischief-makers—­an over-zealous man.  He had heard that Sir Felix had left College with the character of being little better than a revolutionist in politics and an infidel in religion, and he arrived conscientiously at the conclusion that it was his bounden duty to summon the lord of the manor to hear sound views enunciated in the parish church.  Sir Felix fiercely resented the clergyman’s well-meant but ill-directed interference, insulting him so grossly and so publicly, that the families in the neighbourhood sent letters of indignant remonstrance to the Park, and even the tenants of the Blackwater property expressed their opinion as strongly as they dared.  The baronet, who had no country tastes of any kind, and no attachment to the estate or to any one living on it, declared that society at Blackwater should never have a second chance of annoying him, and left the place from that moment.

After a short residence in London he and his wife departed for the Continent, and never returned to England again.  They lived part of the time in France and part in Germany—­always keeping themselves in the strict retirement which the morbid sense of his own personal deformity had made a necessity to Sir Felix.  Their son, Percival, had been born abroad, and had been educated there by private tutors.  His mother was the first of his parents whom he lost.  His father had died a few years after her, either in 1825 or 1826.  Sir Percival had been in England, as a young man, once or twice before that period, but his acquaintance with the late Mr. Fairlie did not begin till after the time of his father’s death.  They soon became very intimate, although Sir Percival was seldom, or never, at Limmeridge House in those days.  Mr. Frederick Fairlie might have met him once or twice in Mr. Philip Fairlie’s company, but he could have known little of him at that or at any other time.  Sir Percival’s only intimate friend in the Fairlie family had been Laura’s father.