Millenbeck

She wanted a new piano, instead of the wheezy old machine in the drawing-room.

She wanted a thousand things, and, to make her dissatisfaction with Barn Elms more complete, not a quarter of a mile away, across a short stretch of feathery pine trees, on a knoll, stood a really great house, Millenbeck by name.

To Jacqueline's inexperienced eyes, the large square brick house, with its stone balustrade around the roof, its broad porch, with marble steps that shone whitely through the trees around it, was quite palatial, and nobody at all lived there.

It was the family place of the Throckmortons.

The last Throckmorton in the country was dead and gone, but there was another, grandson to the last, a certain Major George Throckmorton, who, although Virginian born and bred, had remained in the regular army all through the war, and was still in it.

This George Throckmorton had spent his boyhood at Millenbeck with his grandfather, who was evil-tempered and morose, and thoroughly wicked in every way.

The old man had gone to his account during the war, and since then his creditors had been fighting over his assets, which consisted of Millenbeck alone.

Major Throckmorton had money, and it had been whispered about that whenever Millenbeck was sold, this Army Throckmorton would buy it.