es contested
the county and been three times beaten. To speak the truth of him,
his own spirit would have been satisfied with the loss of the first
ten thousand pounds; but Lady Arabella was made of higher mettle. She
had married a man with a fine place and a fine fortune; but she had
nevertheless married a commoner and had in so far derogated from her
high birth. She felt that her husband should be by rights a member of
the House of Lords; but, if not, that it was at least essential that
he should have a seat in the lower chamber. She would by degrees sink
into nothing if she allowed herself to sit down, the mere wife of a
mere country squire.

Thus instigated, Mr Gresham repeated the useless contest three times,
and repeated it each time at a serious cost. He lost his money, Lady
Arabella lost her temper, and things at Greshamsbury went on by no
means as prosperously as they had done in the days of the old squire.

In the first twelve years of their marriage, children came fast into
the nursery at Greshamsbury. The first that was born was a boy; and
in those happy halcyon days, when the old squire was still alive,
great was the joy at the birth of an heir to Greshamsbury; bonfires
gleamed through the country-side, oxen were roasted whole, and
the customary paraphernalia of joy, usual to rich Britons on such
occasions were gone through with wondrous eclat. But when the tenth
baby, and the ninth little girl, was brought into the world, the
outward show of joy was not so great.

Then other troubles came on. Some of these little girls were sickly,
some very sickly. Lady Arabella had her faults, and they were such as
were extremely detrimental to her husband's happiness and her own;
but that of being an indifferent mother was not among them. She had
worried her husband daily for years because he was not in Parliament,
she had worried him because he would not furnish the house in Portman
Square, she had worried him because he objected to have more people
every winter at Greshamsbury Park than the house would hold; but now
she changed her tune and worried him because Selina coughed, because
Helena was hectic, because poor Sophy's spine was weak, and Matilda's
appetite was gone.

Worrying from such causes was pardonable it will be said. So it was;
but the manner was hardly pardonable. Selina's cough was certainly
not fairly attributable to the old-fashioned furniture in Portman
Square; nor would Sophy's spine have been m