concerning her origin, and receive for answer from the high-minded
baronet, "Madam, the woman is my wife!"--after which the prudent dowager
asked no more questions, but treated her daughter-in-law with neither
better nor worse than civility. Sir Wilton, in fact, soon came to owe his
wife a grudge that he had married her, and none the less that at the time
he felt himself of a generosity more than human in bestowing upon her his
name. Creation itself, had he ever thought of it, would have seemed to
him a small thing beside such a gift!

That Robina Armour, after experience of his first advances, should have
at last consented to marry sir Wilton Lestrange, was in no sense in her
favour, although after a fashion she was in love with him--in love, that
is, with the gentleman of her own imagining whom she saw in the baronet;
while the baronet, on his part, was what he called in love with what he
called _the woman_. As he was overcome by her beauty, so was she by his
rank--an idol at whose clay feet is cast many a spiritual birthright--and
as mean a deity as any of man's device. But the blacksmith's daughter was
in many respects, notwithstanding, a woman of good sense, with much real
refinement, and a genuine regard for rectitude. Although sir Wilton had
never loved her with what was best in him, it was not in spite of what
was best in him that he fell in love with her. Had his better nature been
awake, it would have justified the bond, and been strengthened by it.

Lady Lestrange's father was a good blacksmith, occasionally drunk in his
youth, but persistently sober now in his middle age; a long-headed
fellow, with reach and quality in the prudence which had long ceased to
appear to him the highest of virtues. At one period he had accounted it
the prime duty of existence to take care of oneself; and so much of this
belief had he communicated to his younger daughter, that she deported
herself so that sir Wilton married her--with the result that, when Death