"My name is Helen Steiner, and I am living with my stepfather, who is the last survivor of one of the oldest Saxon families in England, the Roylotts, on the western border of Surrey."
Holmes nodded his head. "The name is familiar to me," he said.
"The family was at one time among the richest in England, and its estates extended over the borders into Berkshire in the north, and Hampshire in the west. In the last century, however, four successive heirs were all of a dissipated and wasteful disposition; and the family ruin was eventually completed by a gambler in the days of the Regency. Nothing was left except a few acres of ground and the 200 year-old-house, which is itself crushed under a heavy mortgage.
The last squire dragged out his existence there, living the horrible life of a poor aristocrat, but his only son, my stepfather, seeing that he must adapt himself to the new conditions, took a loan from a relative, which enabled him to obtain a medical degree. He went out to Calcutta, where by his professional skill and his force of character, he established a large practice. In a fit of anger, however, caused by some robberies in the house, he beat his butler to death, and narrowly escaped being hanged. As it was, he spent a long time in prison, and afterwards returned to England a morose and disappointed man.
Stepfather: The husband of a woman who has a child that is not his Saxons : The people of England who were conquered by the Normans in 1066 Estates : Land owned by somebody Dissipated: Decadent, without morality Disposition : Character Regency: The time of George III’s madness, when the kingdom was ruled by his son (later George IV) Crushed : Pressed flat by a heavy weight Mortgage : Money borrowed with a house as security
Loan: Money borrowed from somebody Practice : The collective name for the patients of a doctor Fit : An attack of illness or emotion Morose : Angry and in a bad humour
