text:  Bandvale Hall had lain empty for a long time--old Frank Edwards so well known as a sportsman had been dead for eighteen years his horses sold his kennels dismantled and his son after so absurdly long a minority (for his father had capriciously fixed his majority at twenty-three ) only now coming of age; but whether he would reside at Bandvale or continue in the neighbourhood of Leicester where his guardian lived or what he would do nobody could tell