field of his father, Sir Nelson Challoner.

Dulcie's mother had died just after the birth of Dick, and Sir Roland
had tried to make up the loss to Dulcie by getting his only and elderly
sister Hannah--"Aunt Hannah" as she was inevitably called by all who
stayed at Holt Manor, and in fact by everybody who had seen her more
than twice--to come and live with him. And there at Holt she had, in her
eccentric way, ever since superintended domestic arrangements and
mothered his beautiful little girl and her only brother, by this time an
obstreperous boy of fourteen, at Eton and on his way to Oxford.

Aunt Hannah was, as Dulcie expressed it, "rather a dear, quaint thing."
But she was more than that, I thought. She had such a pungent wit, her
sayings were at times so downright--not to say acrid--that many stood in
terror of her and positively dreaded her quick tongue. I rather liked
Aunt Hannah myself, perhaps because, by the greatest of good luck, I
happened not to have done anything so far to incur her displeasure,
which she was never backward in expressing forcibly, or, as Dick the
schoolboy brother put it, "in no measured terms." Still, as it is the
unexpected that always happens, I knew there might yet come a day when I
should be called upon to break a lance with Aunt Hannah, and I must say
I devoutly hoped that in the event of so deplorable an occurrence,
heaven would vouchsafe me the victory. Steeped in intrigue up to her old
ears, Aunt Hannah had, I believed, several times laid deep plans
touching her niece's future--plans mysterious to the last degree, which
seemed to afford her the liveliest satisfaction. None of these schemes,
however, had succeeded up to the present, for Dulcie seemed with
delightful inconsistence consistently to "turn down" the admirable
suitors whom Aunt Hannah metaphorically dangled before her eyes. Yet so
cleverly did she do this that, in some wondrous way known only to