Theodore Vellan had been out of England for more than thirty years.
Thirty odd years ago the set he lived in had been startled and
mystified by his sudden flight and disappearance. At that time his
position here had seemed a singularly pleasant one. He was young--he
was seven- or eight-and-twenty; he was fairly well off--he had
something like three thousand a year, indeed; he belonged to an
excellent family, the Shropshire Vellans, of whom the titled head,
Lord Vellan of Norshingfield, was his uncle; he was good-looking,
amiable, amusing, popular; and he had just won a seat in the House of
Commons (as junior member for Sheffingham), where, since he was
believed to be ambitious as well as clever, it was generally expected
that he would go far.
Then, quite suddenly, he had applied for the Chiltern Hundreds, and
left England. His motives for this unlikely course he explained to no
one. To a few intimate friends he wrote brief letters of farewell. 'I
am off for a journey round the world. I shall be gone an indefinite
time.' The indefinite time ended by defining itself as upwards of
thirty years, for the first twenty of which only his solicitor and his
bankers could have given you his address, and they wouldn't. For the
last ten he was understood to be living in the island of Porto Rico,
and planting sugar. Meanwhile his uncle had died, and his cousin (his
uncle's only son) had succeeded to the peerage. But the other day his
cousin, too, had died, and died childless, so that the estates and
dignities had devolved upon himself. With that, a return to England
became an obligation; there were a score of minor beneficiaries under
his cousin's will, whose legacies could not, without great delay, be
paid unless the new lord was at hand.