THE NINTH GENERATION The house was very silent.

An odour of disinfectants pervaded the atmosphere.

Upstairs hushed, swift steps moved to and fro.
Hugh Vallincourt stood at the window of his study, staring out with unseeing eyes at the smooth, shaven lawns and well-kept paths with their background of leafless trees.

It seemed to him that he had been standing thus for hours, waiting--waiting for someone to come and tell him that a son and heir was born to him.
He never doubted that it would be a son.

By some freak of chance the first-born of the Vallincourts of Coverdale had been, for eight successive generations, a boy.