Cashel Byron's Profession

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.