CHAPTER XI

Brandon Beeches, in the Thames valley, was the seat of Sir Charles
Brandon, seventh baronet of that name. He had lost his father before
attaining his majority, and had married shortly afterwards; so that in
his twenty-fifth year he was father to three children. He was a little
worn, in spite of his youth, but he was tall and agreeable, had a
winning way of taking a kind and soothing view of the misfortunes of
others, could tell a story well, liked music and could play and sing
a little, loved the arts of design and could sketch a little in water
colors, read every magazine from London to Paris that criticised
pictures, had travelled a little, fished a little, shot a little,
botanized a little, wandered restlessly in the footsteps of women, and
dissipated his energies through all the small channels that his wealth
opened and his talents made easy to him. He had no large knowledge of
any subject, though he had looked into many just far enough to replace
absolute unconsciousness of them with measurable ignorance. Never having
enjoyed the sense of achievement, he was troubled with unsatisfied
aspirations that filled him with melancholy and convinced him that he
was a born artist. His wife found him selfish, peevish, hankering after
change, and prone to believe that he was attacked by dangerous disease
when he was only catching cold.

Lady Brandon, who believed that he understood all the subjects he
talked about because she did not understand them herself, was one of
his disappointments. In person she resembled none of the types of beauty
striven after by the painters of her time, but she had charms to which
few men are insensible. She was tall, soft, and stout, with ample and
shapely arms, shoulders, and hips. With her small head, little ears,
pretty lips, and roguish eye, she, being a very large creature,
presented an immensity of half womanly, half infantile loveliness which
smote even grave men with a desire to clasp her in their arms and kiss
her. This desire had scattered the desultory intellectual culture of Sir
Charles at first sight. His imagination invested her with the taste for
the fine arts which he required from a wife, and he married her in her
first season, only to discover that the amativeness in her temperament
was so little and languid that she made all his attempts at fondness
ridiculous, and robbed the caresses for which he had longed of all their
anticipated ecstasy. Intellectually