He came, on both his father's and his mother's side, of people who had lived for centuries the secure, pleasant life of the English county gentry.

But instead of taking advantage of their opportunities, the Varicks had gone not upwards, but steadily downwards--the final crash having been owing to the folly, indeed the far more than folly, as Lionel Varick had come to know when still a child, of his own father.
Lionel's father had not lived long after his disgraceful bankruptcy.

But he had had time to imbue his boy with an intense pride in the past glories of the Varick family.

So it was that the shabby, ugly little villa where his boyhood had been spent on the outskirts of a town famous for its grammar-school, and where his mother settled for her boy's sake after her husband's death, had been peopled to young Varick with visions of just such a country home as was this wonderful old house now before him.
No wonder he felt "fey" to-night.

Everything was falling out as he had hoped it would do.