sixteen and a delicate creature, falling into a fit of illness through
her grief and disappointment. The coming of the second threw him into a
rage, the third into a fury; and the birth of a fourth being announced,
he stormed like a madman, would not look at it, and went upon a debauch
so protracted and disgraceful as to be the scandal of the county and
the subject of gossip for many a day.

From that hour the innocent Lady Wildairs did not raise her head. Her
family had rejected her on account of her marriage with a rake so
unfashionable and of reputation so coarse. Wildairs Hall, ill kept, and
going to ruin through the wasteful living of its spendthrift master,
was no place for such guests as were ladies and gentlemen. The only
visitors who frequented it were a dozen or so chosen spirits who shared
Sir Jeoffry's tastes--hunted, drank, gambled with him, and were as
loose livers as himself. My Lady Wildairs, grown thin, yellow, and
haggard, shrank into her own poor corner of the big house, a bare west
wing where she bore her children in lonely suffering and saw them die,
one after the other, two only having the strength to survive. She was
her lord's hopeless slave, and at the same time the mere knowledge of
her existence was an irritation to him, she being indeed regarded by
him as a Sultan might regard the least fortunate of his harem.

"Damn her," he cried once to one of his cronies, a certain Lord
Eldershaw, "in these days I hate the sight of her, with her skinny
throat and face. What's a woman for, after she looks like that? If she
were not hanging about my neck I could marry some fine strapping girl
who would give me an heir before a year was out."

If young Roxholm did not hear this special anecdote, he heard others
from various sources which were productive in him of many puzzled and