at he succeeded where failure would have been a
blessing.

My poor brother Eustace! what must not Harold's marriage have been to
him! Into the common home, hitherto peaceful if mournful, was brought
this coarse, violent, uneducated woman, jealous of him and his family,
unmeasured in rudeness, contemning all the refinements to which he
clung, and which even then were second nature to the youths, boasting
over him for being a convict, whereas her father was a free settler,
and furious at any act of kindness or respect to him from her husband.

She must have had a sort of animal jealousy, for the birth of her first
child rendered her so savagely intolerant of poor Dora's fondness for
Harold, that the offer of a clergyman's wife to take charge of the
little girl was thankfully accepted by her father, though it separated
him from his darling by more than fifty miles.

The woman's plan seemed to be to persecute the two Eustaces out of her
house, since she could not persuade Harold that it was not as much
theirs as his own. They clung on, as weak men do, for want of energy
to make a change, and Eustace said his father would never complain; but
Harold never guessed how much she made him suffer. Home had become a
wretched place to all, and Harold was more alienated from it, making
long expeditions, staying out as long and as late as he could whenever
business or pleasure called him away, and becoming, alas, more headlong
and reckless in the pursuit of amusement. There were fierce hot words
when he came home, and though a tender respect for his uncle was the
one thing in which he never failed, the whole grand creature was being
wrecked and ruined by the wild courses to which home misery was driving
him.

After about three years of this kind of life, Meg, much against his
will, went to her father's station for the birth of her second child;
lingered in the congenial atmosphere there far longer than was
necessary after her recovery, and roused Harold's jealousy to a violent
pitch by her demeanour towards a fellow of her own rank, whom she
probably would have married but for Harold's unfortunate advantages,
and whom she now most perilously preferred.

The jollification after the poor child's long-deferred christening
ended in furious language on both sides, Meg insisting that she would
not go home while "the old man" remained at Boola Boola, Harold
swearing that she should come at once, and finally forcing her into his
bugg