Page:A Damsel in Distress.pdf/12



NASMUCH as the scene of this story is that historic pile, Belpher Castle, in the country of Hampshire, England, it would be an agreeable task to open it with a leisurely description of the place, followed by some notes on the history of the Earls of Marshmoreton who have owned it since the fifteenth century. Unfortunately, in these days of rush and hurry a novelist works at a disadvantage. He must leap into the middle of his tale with as little delay as he would employ in boarding a moving street car. He must get off the mark with the smooth swiftness of the Californian jack rabbit surprised while lunching. Otherwise, people throw him aside and go out to picture palaces.

I may briefly remark that the present Lord Marshmoreton is a widower of some forty-eight years; that he has two children—a son, Percy Wilbraham Marsh, Lord Belpher, who is on the brink of his twenty-first birthday, and a daughter, Lady Patricia Maud Marsh, who is just twenty; that the chatelaine of the castle is Lady Caroline Byng, Lord Marshmoreton's sister, who married the very wealthy colliery 9