beauty, and had fastened on her all a poet's dreams, deepening and
becoming more fervid in the recesses of a reserved heart, which did
not easily admit new sensations. That stimulus carried him out
cheerfully to India, and quickened his abilities, so that he exerted
himself sufficiently to obtain a lucrative situation early in life.
He married, and his household must have been on the German system,
all the learning on one side, all the domestic cares on the other.
The understanding and refinement wanting in his wife, he believed to
be wanting in all women. As resident at a small remote native court
in India, he saw no female society such as could undeceive him; and
subsequently his Bayford life had not raised his standard of
womankind. A perfect gentleman, his superiority was his own work,
rather than that of station or education, and so he had never missed
intercourse with really ladylike or cultivated, female minds,
expected little from wife, or daughters, or neighbours; had a few
learned friends, but lived within himself. He had acquired a
competence too soon, and had the great misfortune of property without
duties to present themselves obviously. He had nothing to do but to
indulge his naturally indolent scholarly tastes, which, directed as
they had been to Eastern languages, had even less chance of sympathy
among his neighbours than if they had been classical. Always
reserved, and seldom or never meeting with persons who could converse
with him, he had lapsed into secluded habits, and learnt to shut
himself up in his study and exclude every one, that he might have at
least a refuge from the gossip and petty cares that reigned
everywhere else. So seldom was anything said worth his attention,
that he never listened to what was passing, and had learnt to say
'very well'--'I'll see about it,' without even knowing what was said
to him.