From her the dead father could scarcely be more separated than had been the living. Naturally of a rather sedentary disposition, Archibald Chesney, on the death of the wife whom he adored, had become that most uninteresting and selfish of all things, a confirmed bookworm. He went in for study, of the abstruse and heavy order, with an ardor worthy of a better cause. His library was virtually his home; he had neither affections nor desires beyond. Devoting himself exclusively to his books, he suffered them to take entire possession of what he chose to call his heart.
At times he absolutely forgot the existence of his little three-year-old daughter; and if ever the remembrance of her did cross his mind it was but to think of her as an incubus,—as another misfortune heaped upon his luckless shoulders,—and to wonder, with a sigh, what he was to do with her in the future.
The child, deprived of a tender mother at so early an age, was flung, therefore, upon the tender mercies of her nurses, who alternately petted and injudiciously reproved her, until at length she bade fair to be as utterly spoilt as a child can be.
She had one companion, a boy-cousin about a year older than herself. He too was lonely and orphaned, so that the two children, making common cause, clung closely to each other, and shared, both in infancy and in early youth, their joys and sorrows. The Park had been the boy's home ever since his parents' death, Mr. Chesney accepting him as his ward, but never afterward troubling himself about his welfare. Indeed, he had no objection whatever to fill the Park with relations, so long as they left him undisturbed to follow his own devices.
Not that the education of these children was neglected. They had all tuition that was necessary; and Lilian, having a talent for music, learned to sing and play the piano very charmingly. She could ride, too, and sit her horse a merveille, and had a passion for reading,—perhaps inherited. But, as novels were her principal literature, and as she had no one to regulate her choice of them, it is a matter of opinion whether she derived much benefit from them. At least she received little harm, as at seventeen she was as fresh-minded and pure-hearted a child as one might care to know.
The County, knowing her to be an heiress,—though not a large one,—called systematically on her every three months. Twice she had been taken to a ball by an enterprising mother with a large family of unpromising sons. But as she reached her eighteenth year her father died, and her old home, the Park, being strictly entailed on heirs male, passed from her into the hands of a distant cousin utterly unknown. This young man, another Archibald Chesney, was abroad at the time of his kinsman's death,—in Egypt, or Hong-Kong, or Jamaica,—no one exactly knew which—until after much search he was finally discovered to be in Halifax.
From thence he had written to the effect that, as he probably should not return to his native land for another six months, he hoped his cousin (if it pleased her) would continue to reside at the Park—where all the old servants were to be kept on—until his return.
It did please his cousin; and in her old home she still reigned as queen, until after eight months she received a letter from her father's lawyer warning her of Archibald Chesney's actual arrival in London.
This letter failed in its object. Lilian either would not or could not bring herself to name the day that should part her forever from all the old haunts and pleasant nooks she loved so well. She was not brave enough to take her "Bradshaw" and look up the earliest train that ought to convey her away from the Park. Indeed, so utterly wanting in decency and decorum did she appear at this particular epoch of her existence that the heart of her only aunt—her father's sister—was stirred to its depths. So much so that, after mature deliberation (for old people as well as great ones move slowly), she finally packed up the venerable hair-trunk that had seen the rise and fall of several monarchs, and marched all the way from Edinburgh to this Midland English shire, to try what firm expostulation could do in the matter of bringing her niece to see the error of her ways.