was by purchasing, on his knighthood, the rambling but comfortable house
at Hampstead, and ostensibly retiring from active business.

His retirement was not a happy one. He was a stern father and
a severe master. His servants hated, and his wife feared him.
His only son Richard appeared to inherit his father's strong will
and imperious manner. Under careful supervision and a just rule
he might have been guided to good; but left to his own devices outside,
and galled by the iron yoke of parental discipline at home,
he became reckless and prodigal. The mother--poor, timid Ellinor,
who had been rudely torn from the love of her youth, her cousin,
Lord Bellasis--tried to restrain him, but the head-strong boy,
though owning for his mother that strong love which is often a part
of such violent natures, proved intractable, and after three years
of parental feud, he went off to the Continent, to pursue there
the same reckless life which in London had offended Sir Richard.
Sir Richard, upon this, sent for Maurice Frere, his sister's son--the abolition
of the slave trade had ruined the Bristol House of Frere--and bought for him
a commission in a marching regiment, hinting darkly of special favours to come.
His open preference for his nephew had galled to the quick his sensitive wife,
who contrasted with some heart-pangs the gallant prodigality of her father
with the niggardly economy of her husband. Between the houses of parvenu
Devine and long-descended Wotton Wade there had long been little love.
Sir Richard felt that the colonel despised him for a city knight,
and had heard that over claret and cards Lord Bellasis and his friends
had often lamented the hard fortune which gave the beauty, Ellinor,
to so sordid a bridegroom. Armigell Esme Wade, Viscount Bellasis and Wotton,
was a product of his time. Of good family (his ancestor, Armigell,
was reputed to have landed in America before Gilbert or Raleigh),
he had inherited his manor of Bellasis, or Belsize, from one Sir Esme Wade,