She was just the wife for the future baronet, he was
once heard to say—though how he came once
to say it I cannot think, for never before had he
betrayed a consciousness that he would not be the
present baronet for ever and ever. So long as
he did not feel the approach of death, he would never
think of dying, and then he would do his best to forget
it. He seemed sometimes to grudge his son the
dainty little wife Barbara would make him: “The
rascal will be the envy of the clubs!” he said.
MRS. WYLDER.
Mr. Wylder was lord of the manor, and chief land-owner,
though his family had never been the most influential,
in the parish next that in which lay Mortgrange.
He was not much fitted for an English squire.
He wished to stand well with his neighbours, but lacked
the geniality which is the very body, the outside
expression of humanity. Proud of his family, he
had the peculiar fault of the Goth—that
of arrogance, with its accompanying incapacity for
putting oneself in the place of another. Mr.
Wylder possessed a huge inability of conceiving the
manner in which what he did or said must affect the
person to whom he did or said it. So entirely
was he thus disqualified for social interchange, that
he remained supremely satisfied in his consequent
isolation, hardly recognized it, and never doubted
himself a perfect gentleman. Had any diffidence
enabled him to perceive the reflection of himself in
the mirroring minds of those around him, his self-opinion
might have been troubled; but when he did begin to
discover that the neighbours did not desire his company,
he set it down to stupid prejudice against him because
he had been so long absent from the country. He
did not hunt, and when he went out shooting, which
was seldom, he went alone, or with a game-keeper only.
In fact he was so careless, that most men who had once
shot with him, ever after gave him a wide berth when
they saw him with a gun in his hand. On one occasion
he shot his wife’s twin in the calf of the leg;
which, however, made her think no worse of his shooting,
for she could never be persuaded he had not done it
intentionally.
For a short time before leaving Australasia, the family
had spent money in one of its larger cities, and had
been a good deal followed; but neither there nor in
England did they find that wealth could do everything.
A few other qualities, not by any means of the highest
order, are required by nearly all social agglomerations,
and with some of these Mrs. Wylder was as scantily
equipped as her husband with others.
