“Damn her,” he cried once to one of his cronies, a certain Lord Eldershaw, “in these days I hate the sight of her, with her skinny throat and face.  What’s a woman for, after she looks like that?  If she were not hanging about my neck I could marry some fine strapping girl who would give me an heir before a year was out.”

If young Roxholm did not hear this special anecdote, he heard others from various sources which were productive in him of many puzzled and somewhat anxious thoughts.  “Why was it,” he pondered, “that women who had not the happy fortune of his mother seemed at so cruel a disadvantage—­that men who were big and handsome having won them, grew tired of them and cast them aside, with no care for their loneliness and pain?  Why had God so made them that they seemed as helpless as poor driven sheep?  ’Twas not fair it should be so—­he could not feel it honest, though he was beset by grave fears at his own contumacy since he had been taught that God ordained all things.  Had he ordained this, that men should be tyrants, and base, and cruel, and that women should be feeble victims who had but the power to moan and die and be forgotten?  There was my Lord Peterborough, who had fought against Algerine pirates, and at nineteen crowned his young brow with glory in action at Tripoli.  To the boyish mind he was a figure so brilliant and gallant and to be adored that it seemed impossible to allow that his shining could be tarnished by a fault, yet ’twas but a year after his marriage with the fair daughter of Fraser of Mearns that he had wearied of his love and gaily sailed for the Algerine coast again.  Whether the young Countess had bewailed her lot or not, Roxholm had not chanced to hear, but having had for husband a young gentleman so dazzling and full of fascination, how could she have found herself deserted and feel no heartache and shed no tears?  My lord could sail away and fight corsairs, but her poor ladyship must remain behind and do battle only with her heart, gaining no laurels thereby.

The sentiment of the times was not one which rated women high or was fraught with consideration for female weakness.  Charles Stuart taught men how women should be regarded, and the beauties of his Court had aided him in such manner as deepened the impression he had produced.  A beauty had her few years of triumph in which she was pursued, intrigued with, worshipped, flattered, had madrigals sung in her honour; those years over, no one cared to hear of the remainder of her life.  If there were dregs left in her cup, she drank them alone.  A woman who had no beauty was often a mere drudging or child-bearing wife, scapegoat for ill-humour and morning headaches; victim, slave, or unnoticed appendage.  This the whilom toast Lady Wildairs had become, and there were many like her.

The Earl of Dunstanwolde, who was the nobleman who had spoken to the Duke and Duchess of the Gloucestershire Baronet, was a distant kinsman, and a somewhat frequent visitor both at their Graces’ country estates and at their town establishment, Osmonde House.  His own estate was near Gloucestershire, and he knew the stories of Wildairs Hall, as did so many others.