Sir Harold Wynde, Baronet, was standing upon the pier head at Brighton, looking idly seaward, and watching the play of the sunset rays on the waters, the tossing white-capped waves, and the white sails in the distance against the blue sky.

He was not yet fifty years of age, tall and handsome and stately, with fair complexion, fair hair, and keen blue eyes, which at times beamed with a warm and genial radiance that seemed to emanate from his soul. The rare nobility of that soul expressed itself in his features. His commanding intellect betrayed itself in his square, massive brows. His grand nature was patent in every look and smile. He was a widower with two children, the elder a son, who was a captain in a fine regiment in India, the younger a daughter still at boarding-school. He possessed a magnificent estate in Kent, a house in town, and a marine villa, and rejoiced in a clear income of seventy thousand pounds a year.