Christina

Thanks to his close relationship to Lady Cicely Redesdale, the mistress of the house, to whom he had always been more of younger brother than cousin, he had carte blanche to be at the Castle whenever he chose, and to treat the house as if it were in reality, what he assuredly made of it—his actual home. Both to him—and to Cicely's other cousin, Rupert Mernside—the late John Redesdale, her husband, had extended the fullest and most warm hospitality; and since his death, it had still remained a recognised thing that the two cousins should spend their weekends at Bramwell, whenever Lady Cicely and her little daughter were there. The kindly millionaire who had married the lovely but impecunious Cicely Staynes, one of the numerous daughters of the Earl of Netherhall, possessed a host of hospitable instincts, and the Castle had opened its gates wide to Cicely's relations and friends. Only one reservation had been made by honest John Redesdale. No man or woman of doubtful reputation, or damaged character, was allowed to be the guest of his wife; and the shadier members of Society never set foot within any house of which the millionaire was master. Jack Layton, strolling idly now across the smoking-room, whose paneled walls and carved furniture had been Redesdale's pride and joy, glanced up at the mantelpiece, over which hung a portrait of the dead man.