“O, but you sha’n’t walk.  You shall go by rail.  I’ll spare you the money for that, for once in a way, though I’m not over fond of wasting money.”

Day by day Mr. Whitelaw’s habits grew more secluded and morose.  It is not to be supposed that he was troubled by those finer feelings which might have made the misery of a better man; but even in his dull nature there may have been some dim sense that his marriage was a failure and mistake; that in having his own way in this matter he had in nowise secured his own happiness.  He could not complain of his wife’s conduct in any one respect.  She was obedient to his will in all things, providing for his comfort with scrupulous regularity, industrious, indefatigable even.  As a housekeeper and partner of his fortunes, no man could have desired a better wife.  Yet dimly, in that sluggish soul, there was the consciousness that he had married a woman who hated him, that he had bought her with a price; and, being a man prone to think the worst of his fellow-creatures, Mr. Whitelaw believed that, sooner or later, his wife meant to have her revenge upon him somehow.  She was waiting for his death perhaps; calculating that, being so much her senior, and a hard-working man, he would die soon enough to leave her a young widow.  And then, of course, she would marry Frank Randall; and all the money which he, Stephen, had amassed, by the sacrifice of every pleasure in life, would enrich that supercilious young coxcomb.

It was a hard thing to think of, and Stephen pondered upon the expediency of letting off Wyncomb Farm, and sinking all his savings in the purchase of an annuity.  He could not bring himself to contemplate selling the house and lands that had belonged to his race for so many generations.  He clung to the estate, not from any romantic reverence for the past, not from any sentimental associations connected with those who had gone before him, but from the mere force of habit, which rendered this grim ugly old house and these flat shelterless fields dearer to him than all the rest of the universe.  He was a man to whom to part with anything was agony; and if he loved anything in the world, he loved Wyncomb.  The possession of the place had given him importance for twenty years past.  He could not fancy himself unconnected with Wyncomb.  His labours had improved the estate too; and he could not endure to think how some lucky purchaser might profit by his prudence and sagacity.  There had been some fine old oaks on the land when he inherited it, all mercilessly stubbed-up at the beginning of his reign; there had been tall straggling hedgerows, all of a tangle with blackberry bushes, ferns, and dog-roses, hazel and sloe trees, all done away with by his order.  No, he could never bring himself to sell Wyncomb.  Nor was the purchase of an annuity a transaction which he was inclined to accomplish.  It was a pleasing notion certainly, that idea of concentrating all his hoarded money upon the remaining years of his life—­retiring from the toils of agriculture, and giving himself up for the rest of his days to an existence of luxurious idleness.  But, on the other hand, it would be a bitter thing to surrender his fondly-loved money for the poor return of an income, to deprive himself of all opportunity of speculating and increasing his store.