t have let the Manor and lived elsewhere for the world. He
went regularly to church on Sunday morning, though it bored him
extremely, because, like Major Pendennis, he thought that "when a
gentleman is _sur ses terres_ he must give an example to the country
people." Had he been starving he would not have sold a single rood of
Redmarley land to assuage his hunger. Similarly he would himself have
done without a great many things rather than let any of his people go
hungry. But it was only because they were _his_ people, part of the
state and circumstance of Redmarley. He didn't care for them a bit as
individuals. Any intercourse with the peasantry was irksome to him.
Dialect afflicted him. He had nothing to say to them, and they were
stricken dumb in his awe-inspiring presence. He was well content to
have few personal dealings with those, who, in his own mind, he thought
of as his "retainers." He left everything of that sort to his wife.

It was the same with the children. He looked upon them as a concession
to Marjory's liking for that sort of thing: and by "that sort of thing"
he meant his wife's enthusiastic interest in her fellow-creatures.

To be sure he was pleased that there should be no question as to a
direct heir . . . but . . . six of them was really rather a nuisance.
Children were like peasantry, inclined to be awkward and uncouth, crude
in thought and word and deed; apt to be sticky unless fresh from the
hands of nurse; in summer nearly always hot, frequently dirty, and
certainly always noisy, with, moreover, a distinct leaning towards low
company and a plainly manifest discomfort in his own.

He was proud of them because they were Ffolliots, and because they were
tall and straight and handsome (how wisely he had chosen their
mother!), and he supposed that some day, when they became more
civilised, he would be able to take some pleasure in their society.
Even the two eldest, Grantly and Mary, wearied him. He could never
seem to find any topic of mutual interest, except Redmarley itself, and
then they always introduced irrelevant matter relating to the
inhabitants that he had no desire to hear.

Had Marjory, his wife, grown plain and anxious during her twenty years
of married life, it is probable she would have bored him too. But she
kept her hold upon him because she was not only the most beautiful
woman he knew, but she satisfied his artistic sensibilities all round.
She was full of individua