introduced by him to many noblemen and gentlemen, his personal friends,
some one at least of whom, on the slightest encouragement, would, he
felt sure, have taken the place of the foreign charlatan she had
disgraced him by preferring), consoled himself for her bad taste by
entering into her possessions, which comprised a quantity of new
jewellery, new lace, and feminine apparel, and an income of nearly seven
thousand pounds a year. After this, he became so welcome in society that
he could have boasted with truth at the end of any July that there were
few marriageable gentlewomen of twenty-six and upward in London who had
not been submitted to his inspection with a view to matrimony. But
finding it easy to delegate the care of his children to school
principals and hospitable friends, he concluded that he had nothing to
gain and much comfort to lose by adding a stepmother to his
establishment; and, after some time, it became the custom to say of Mr.
Lind that the memory of his first wife kept him single. Thus, whilst his
sons were drifting to manhood through Harrow and Cambridge, and his
daughter passing from one relative's house to another's on a continual
round of visits, sharing such private tuition as the cousins with whom
she happened to be staying happened to be receiving just then, he lived
at his club and pursued the usual routine of a gentleman-bachelor in
London.

In the course of time, Reginald Lind, the eldest child, entered the
army, and went to India with his regiment. His brother George, less
stolid, weaker, and more studious, preferred the Church. Marian, the
youngest, from being constantly in the position of a guest, had early
acquired habits of self-control and consideration for others, and
escaped the effects, good and evil, of the subjection in which children
are held by the direct authority of their parents.