Weir must have supposed his bride to be somehow suitable; perhaps he

belonged to that class of men who think a weak head the ornament of

women - an opinion invariably punished in this life. Her descent and

her estate were beyond question. Her wayfaring ancestors and her

litigious father had done well by Jean. There was ready money and there

were broad acres, ready to fall wholly to the husband, to lend dignity

to his descendants, and to himself a title, when he should be called

upon the Bench. On the side of Jean, there was perhaps some fascination

of curiosity as to this unknown male animal that approached her with the

roughness of a ploughman and the APLOMB of an advocate. Being so

trenchantly opposed to all she knew, loved, or understood, he may well

have seemed to her the extreme, if scarcely the ideal, of his sex. And

besides, he was an ill man to refuse. A little over forty at the period

of his marriage, he looked already older, and to the force of manhood

added the senatorial dignity of years; it was, perhaps, with an

unreverend awe, but he was awful. The Bench, the Bar, and the most

experienced and reluctant witness, bowed to his authority - and why not

Jeannie Rutherford?

The heresy about foolish women is always punished, I have said, and Lord

Hermiston began to pay the penalty at once. His house in George Square

was wretchedly ill-guided; nothing answerable to the expense of

maintenance but the cellar, which was his own private care. When things

went wrong at dinner, as they continually did, my lord would look up the

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