g to a man of ample means,
who adored her, and never set the slightest restriction upon her
expenditure, extravagance had become her second nature. To have to
study every outlay, to ask herself whether she could not do without a
thing, was a hard trial; but it had become so painful to her to ask the
Captain for money that she preferred the novel pain of self-denial to
that humiliation. And then there was the cheerless prospect of the
future always staring her in the face, that dreary time after Violet's
majority, when it would be a question whether she and her husband could
afford to go on living at the Abbey House.

"Everybody will know that my income is diminished," she thought.
"However well we may manage, people will know that we are pinching."

This was a vexatious reflection. The sting of poverty itself could not
be so sharp as the pain of being known to be poor.

Captain Winstanley pursued the even tenor of his way all this time, and
troubled himself but little about his wife's petty sorrows. He did his
duty to her according to his own lights, and considered that she had no
ground for complaint. He even took pains to be less subdued in his
manner to Lady Ellangowan, and to give no shadow of reason for the
foolish jealousy he so much despised. His mind was busy about his own
affairs. He had saved money since his marriage, and he employed himself
a good deal in the investment of his savings. So far he had been lucky
in all he touched, and had contrived to increase his capital by one or
two speculative ventures in foreign railways. If things went on as well
for the next six years he and his wife might live at the Abbey House,
and maintain their station in the county, till the end of the chapter.

"I daresay Pamela will outlive me," thought the Captain; "those
fragile-looking invalid women are generally long lived. And I have all
the chances of the hunting-field, and vicious horses, and other men's
blundering with loaded guns, against me. What can happen to a woman who
sits at home and works crewel antimacassars and reads novels all day,
and never drinks anything stronger than tea, and never eats enough to
disturb her digestion? She ought to be a female Methuselah."

Secure in this idea or his wife's longevity, and happy in his
speculations, Captain Winstanley looked forward cheerfully to the
future: and the evil shadow of the day when the hand of fate should
thrust him from the good old house where he was master