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He himself had invariably yielded, adapting himself with very little trouble to conditions that had violently swung between wealth and poverty, country and town, quiet and dissipation. He was now completely happy as a country Squire. He enjoyed hunting and hawking and managing his estate: he took pride and pleasure in his furnace, in the forging of balls and ordnance, gates, bars, bolts and palings. He was always quietly busy, and his domestic happiness was less a relaxation or a background than a glow suffusing the rest.

His only real grief had been the death of his heir. Charles Stephen Alard, his only child, had died of smallpox at the age of seven. Apart from his love for the boy, he sorrowed for the coming end of the family, the loss of the Alard name. He was sorry that Gervase had not had a son. It would have been better for him—better for them all.

Not that he didn't love his nieces. He had been sincere when he spoke of his pleasure in having them at Conster. On the day they arrived it had been a joy to see them tripping one after another up the terrace steps, having tumbled with squeals of laughter out of the coach—first Bess in blue, then Henny in yellow, Bride in green, Ann in crimson, and Madge in blue again. They had been like a procession of pretty birds marching up the steps.