And perhaps many husbands may be able to understand a fact which to the general world seems beyond satisfactory explanation.  Hyde loved his wife, loved her tenderly and constantly; he felt himself to be a better man whenever he thought of her and his little son, and he thought of them very frequently; and yet his eyes, his actions, the tones of his voice, daily led his cousin, Lady Suffolk, to imagine herself the empress of his heart and life.  Nor was it to her alone that he permitted this affectation of love.  He found beauty, wherever he met it, provocative of the same apparent devotion.  There were a dozen men in his own circle who hated him with all the sincerity that jealousy gives to dislike and envy; there were a score of women who believed themselves to have private tokens of Hyde’s special admiration for them.

Unfortunately, his military duties were only on very rare occasions any restraint to him.  His days were mainly spent in dangling after Lady Suffolk and other fair dames.  It was auctions at Christie’s, and morning concerts, and afternoon rides and plays, and dinners and balls and masks at Ranelagh’s.  It was sails down the river to Richmond, and trips to Sadler’s Wells, and one perpetual round of flirting and folly, of dressing and dancing and dining and gaming.

[Illustration:  All kinds of frivolity and amusement]

And it must be remembered that the English women of that day were such as England may well hope never to see again.  They had little education:  many very great ladies could hardly read and spell properly.  Their sole accomplishments were dressing and embroidery; the ability to make a few delicate dishes for the table, and scents and pomade for the toilet.  In the higher classes they married for money or position, and gave themselves up to intrigue.  They drank deeply; they played high; they very seldom went to church, for Sunday was the fashionable day for all kinds of frivolity and amusement.  And as the men of any generation are just what the women make them, England never had sons so profligate, so profane and drunken.  The clubs, especially Brooke’s, were the nightly scenes of indescribable orgies.  Gambling alone was their serious occupation; duels were of constant occurrence.

Such a life could not be lived except at frightful and generally ruinous expense.  Hyde was soon embarrassed.  His pay was small and uncertain and the allowance which his brother William added to it, in order that the heir-apparent to the earldom might live in becoming style, had not been calculated on the squandering basis of Hyde’s expenditures.  Toward Christmas bills began to pour in, creditors became importunate, and, for the first time in his life, creditors really troubled him.  Lady Capel was not likely to pay his debts any more.  The earl, in settling Hyde’s American obligations, had warned him against incurring others, and had frankly told him he would permit him to go to jail rather than pay such wicked and foolish bills for him again.  The income from Hyde Manor had never been more than was required for the expenses of the place; and the interest on Katherine’s money had gone, though he could not tell how.  He was destitute of ready cash, and he foresaw that he would have to borrow some from Lady Capel or some other accommodating friend.