His admiration for his wife survived the ardor of his first love for
her, and she employed all her forethought not to disappoint his
reliance on her judgment. She led a busy life, and wrote some
learned monographs, as well as a work in which she denounced
education as practised in the universities and public schools. Her
children inherited her acuteness and refinement with their father's
robustness and aversion to study. They were precocious and impudent,
had no respect for Cashel, and showed any they had for their mother
principally by running to her when they were in difficulties. She
never punished nor scolded them; but she contrived to make their
misdeeds recoil naturally upon them so inevitably that they soon
acquired a lively moral sense which restrained them much more
effectually than the usual methods of securing order in the nursery.
Cashel treated them kindly for the purpose of conciliating them; and
when Lydia spoke of them to him in private, he seldom said more than
that the imps were too sharp for him, or that he was blest if he
didn't believe that they were born older than their father. Lydia
often thought so too; but the care of this troublesome family had
one advantage for her. It left her little time to think about
herself, or about the fact that when the illusion of her love passed
away Cashel fell in her estimation. But the children were a success;
and she soon came to regard him as one of them. When she had leisure
to consider the matter at all, which seldom occurred, it seemed to
her that, on the whole, she had chosen wisely.
Alice Goff, when she heard of Lydia's projected marriage, saw that
she must return to Wiltstoken, and forget her brief social splendor
as soon as possible. She therefore thanked Miss Carew for her
bounty, and begged to relinquish her post of companion. Lydia
assented, but managed to delay this sacrifice to a sense of duty and
necessity until a day early in winter, when Lucian gave way to a
hankering after smiled once or twice; and when he did so the jurymen
grinned, but recovered their solemnity suddenly when the bench
recollected itself and became grave again. Every one in court knew
that the police were right--that there had been a prize-fight--that
the betting on it had been recorded in all the sporting papers for
weeks beforehand--that Cashel was the most terrible fighting man of
the day, and that Paradise had not dared to propose a renewal of the
interrupted contest. And they listened with admiration and delight
while the advocate proved that these things were incredible and
nonsensical.