By the time the lumbering cab he engaged at the railway station deposited him at the Manor House, it was long past midnight. After continuous knocking a sleepy caretaker descended, only to open the door, tell the visitor to be gone, and slam it in his face. It had needed the thunderous assistance of the cabman applied both to bell and knocker and with boots upon the door panels to recall the caretaker. Lord Madeley had discharged him and his wife there and then, and neither knew, cared, nor ever inquired whether the couple left the house in the darkness or waited until the following day. Such had been the home-coming of Lord Madeley.

Instructing his lawyers to refurnish the house, engage servants, and appoint a properly qualified agent to manage the estate, Lord Madeley reorganised and required[13] in his household a reversion and rigid adherence to the studied solemnity of state which he remembered from the dignified days of his father and grandfather. That he regarded as a duty attaching to his rank, his caste, and his family.

[13]

Personally he remained wedded to his pursuit of science, and continued his experiments and investigations. A recluse he had been in London—a recluse he remained at Madeley, and for the first five years of his enjoyment of the family heritage he never once set foot outside the doors of the Manor House. Absorbed in science, his mind deep and recondite in those directions, simple, straightforward, and lovable in all the matters of a more worldly nature, the old peer had probably never given a thought to either any woman in particular or to the female sex as a general proposition. It is quite probable that[14] it had never crossed Lord Madeley’s mind that there really were two sexes, save as a scientific proposition, of which scientific proposition he, as a man of science, was naturally cognisant. As a social problem he had never thought of it, knew nothing of it, and cared less.

[14]

But peers have obligations thrust upon them, from which lesser mortals are exempt. The exact circumstances which had produced it are immaterial to the story, but a royal command had left Lord Madeley no alternative, and he had in obedience thereto betaken himself to town. That it was the first time he had recrossed the threshold of the Manor House since he had entered it was a thought which probably never presented itself to his mind; and that he was returning to the scenes in which the greater part of his life had been spent quickened his pulse not at all. He was irked by the command, bored by the[15] anticipated absence of his scientific 

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