Grey Roses

Excerpt: ...as upwards of thirty years, for the first twenty of which only his solicitor and his bankers could have given you his address, and they wouldn't. For the last ten he was understood to be living in the island of Porto Rico, and planting sugar. Meanwhile his uncle had died, and his cousin (his uncle's only son) had succeeded to the peerage. But the other day his cousin, too, had died, and died childless, so that the estates and dignities had devolved upon himself. With that, a return to England became an obligation; there were a score of minor beneficiaries under his cousin's will, whose legacies could not, without great delay, be paid unless the new lord was at hand. II. Mrs Sandryl-Kempton sat before the fire in her wide, airy, faded drawing-room, and thought of the Theodore Vellan of old days, and wondered what the present Lord Vellan would be like. She had got a note from him that morning, despatched from Southampton the day before, announcing, 'I shall be in town to-morrow