somewhat suitable; perhaps he belonged to
that class of men who think a weak head the ornament of women--an
opinion invariably punished in this life. Her descent and her estate
were beyond question. Her wayfaring ancestors and her litigious father
had done well by Jean. There was ready money and there were broad acres,
ready to fall wholly to the husband, to lend dignity to his descendants,
and to himself a title, when he should be called upon the Bench. On the
side of Jean, there was perhaps some fascination of curiosity as to this
unknown male animal that approached her with the roughness of a
ploughman and the _aplomb_ of an advocate. Being so trenchantly opposed
to all she knew, loved, or understood, he may well have seemed to her
the extreme, if scarcely the ideal, of his sex. And besides, he was an
ill man to refuse. A little over forty at the period of his marriage, he
looked already older, and to the force of manhood added the senatorial
dignity of years; it was, perhaps, with an unreverend awe, but he was
awful. The Bench, the Bar, and the most experienced and reluctant
witness, bowed to his authority--and why not Jeannie Rutherford?

The heresy about foolish women is always punished, I have said, and Lord
Hermiston began to pay the penalty at once. His house in George Square
was wretchedly ill-guided; nothing answerable to the expense of
maintenance but the cellar, which was his own private care. When things
went wrong at dinner, as they continually did, my lord would look up the
table at his wife: "I think these broth would be better to sweem in than
to sup." Or else to the butler: "Here, M'Killop, awa' wi' this Raadical
gigot--tak' it to the French, man, and bring me some puddocks! It seems
rather a sore kind of business that I should be all day in Court
haanging Radicals, and get nawthing to my denner." Of course this was
but a manner of speaking, and he had never hanged a man for being a
Radical in his life; the law, of which he was the faithful minister,
directing otherwise. And of course these growls were in the nature of
pleasantry, but it was of a recondite sort; and uttered as they were in
his resounding voice, and commented on by that expression which they
called in the Parliament House "Hermiston's hanging face"--they struck
mere dismay into the wife. She sat before him speechless and fluttering;
at each dish, as at a fresh ordeal, her eye hovered toward my lord's
countenance and fell again; if he bu