rought it to pass that Martin requested a perusal
of the manuscript as it advanced, which it did but slowly. Godwin durst
not endanger his success in the examination by encroaching upon hours
of necessary study; his leisure was largely sacrificed to _Bibel und
Natur_, and many an evening of calm golden loveliness, when he longed
to be amid the fields, passed in vexatious imprisonment. The name of
Reusch grew odious to him, and he revenged himself for the hypocrisy of
other hours by fierce scorn, cast audibly at this laborious exegetist.

CHAPTER III

It occasionally happens that a woman whose early life has been directed
by native silliness and social bias, will submit to a tardy education
at the hands of her own children. Thus was it with Mrs Warricombe.

She came of a race long established in squirearchic dignity amid heaths
and woodlands. Her breeding was pure through many generations of the
paternal and maternal lines, representative of a physical type,
fortified in the males by much companionship with horse and hound, and
by the corresponding country pursuits of dowered daughters. At the time
of her marriage she had no charms of person more remarkable than rosy
comeliness and the symmetry of supple limb. As for the nurture of her
mind, it had been intrusted to home-governesses of respectable
incapacity. Martin Warricombe married her because she was one of a
little circle of girls, much alike as to birth and fortune, with whom
he had grown up in familiar communication. Timidity imposed restraints
upon him which made his choice almost a matter of accident. As befalls
often enough, the betrothal became an accomplished fact whilst he was
still doubting whether he desired it or not. When the fervour of early
wedlock was outlived, he had no difficulty in accepting as a matter of
course that his life's companion should be hopelessly illogical and at
heart indifferent to everything but the small graces and substantial
comforts of provincial existence. One of the advantages of wealth is
that it allows husband and wife to keep a great deal apart without any
show of mutual unkindness, a condition essential to happiness in
marriage. Time fostered in them a calm attachment, independent of
spiritual sympathy, satisfied with a common regard for domestic honour.

Not that Mrs. Warricombe remained in complete ignorance of her
husband's pursuits; social forms would scarcely have allowed this,
seeing that she was in constant