The rights and wrongs of the story, presuming that they had some
existence in fact, were no longer clearly known to his wife and
children; but this disappointment had played a very large part in
their lives, and had poisoned the life of Sir Francis much as a
disappointment in love is said to poison the whole life of a woman.
Long brooding on his failure, continual arrangement and rearrangement
of his deserts and rebuffs, had made Sir Francis much of an egoist,
and in his retirement his temper became increasingly difficult and
exacting.
His wife now offered so little resistance to his moods that she was
practically useless to him. He made his daughter Eleanor into his
chief confidante, and the prime of her life was being rapidly consumed
by her father. To her he dictated the memoirs which were to avenge his
memory, and she had to assure him constantly that his treatment had
been a disgrace. Already, at the age of thirty-five, her cheeks were
whitening as her mother's had whitened, but for her there would be no
memories of Indian suns and Indian rivers, and clamor of children in a
nursery; she would have very little of substance to think about when
she sat, as Lady Otway now sat, knitting white wool, with her eyes
fixed almost perpetually upon the same embroidered bird upon the same
fire-screen.
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