his waxen sister had developed her stubborn insensibility;--resembling
craziness, every perversion of the refinement demanded by young
Englishmen of their ladies; and it pacified him with the belief that she
was now at rest, the disturbed history of their father and mother at rest
as well; his conscience in relation to the marriage likewise at rest.
Chillon had a wife. Her writing of the welcome to poverty stirred his
knowledge of his wife's nature. Carinthia might bear it and harden to
flint; Henrietta was a butterfly for the golden rays. His thoughts, all
his energies, were bent on the making of money to supply her need for the
pleasure she flew in--a butterfly's grub without it. Accurately so did
the husband and lover read his wife--adoring her the more.

Her letter's embracing close was costly to them. It hurried him to the
compromise of a debateable business, and he fell into the Austrian
Government's terms for the payment of the inheritance from his father;
calculating that--his sister's share deducted-money would be in hand to
pay pressing debts and enable Henrietta to live unworried by cares until
he should have squeezed debts, long due and increasing, out of the
miserly old lord, his uncle. A prospect of supplies for twelve months,
counting the hack and carriage Henrietta had always been used to, seemed
about as far as it was required to look by the husband hastening homeward
to his wife's call. Her letter was a call in the night. Besides, there
were his yet untried Inventions. The new gunpowder testing at Croridge
promised to provide Henrietta with many of the luxuries she could have
had, and had abandoned for his sake. The new blasting powder and a
destructive shell might build her the palace she deserved. His uncle
was, no doubt, his partner. If, however, the profits were divided,
sufficient wealth was assured. But his uncle remained a dubious image.
The husband and lover could enfold no positive prospect to suit his
wife's tastes beyond the twelve months.