Whether or no, she, whom you are to forgive, if you can, did or did
not belong to the Upper Ten Thousand of this our English world, I am
not prepared to say with any strength of affirmation. By blood she was
connected with big people—distantly connected with some very big
people indeed, people who belonged to the Upper Ten Hundred if there
be any such division; but of these very big relations she had known
and seen little, and they had cared as little for her. Her
grandfather, Squire Vavasor of Vavasor Hall, in Westmoreland, was a
country gentleman, possessing some thousand a year at the outside, and
he therefore never came up to London, and had no ambition to have
himself numbered as one in any exclusive set. A hot-headed, ignorant,
honest old gentleman, he lived ever at Vavasor Hall, declaring, to any
who would listen to him, that the country was going to the mischief,
and congratulating himself that at any rate, in his county,
parliamentary reform had been powerless to alter the old political
arrangements. Alice Vavasor, whose offence against the world I am to
tell you, and if possible to excuse, was the daughter of his younger
son; and as her father, John Vavasor, had done nothing to raise the
family name to eminence, Alice could not lay claim to any high
position from her birth as a Vavasor. John Vavasor had come up to
London early in life as a barrister, and had failed. He had failed at
least in attaining either much wealth or much repute, though he had
succeeded in earning, or perhaps I might better say, in obtaining, a
livelihood. He had married a lady somewhat older than himself, who was
in possession of four hundred a year, and who was related to those big
people to whom I have alluded. Who these were, and the special nature
of the relationship, I shall be called upon to explain hereafter, but
at present it will suffice to say that Alice Macleod gave great
offence to all her friends by her marriage. She did not, however,
give them much time for the indulgence of their anger. Having given
birth to a daughter within twelve months of her marriage, she died,
leaving in abeyance that question as to whether the fault of her
marriage should or should not be pardoned by her family.

When a man marries an heiress for her money, if that money be
within her own control, as was the case with Miss Macleod's fortune,
it is generally well for the speculating lover that the lady's friends
should quarrel with him and with her. She is thereby driven to throw
herself entirely into the gentleman's arms, and he thus becomes
possessed of the wife and the money without the abominable nuisance of
stringent settlements. But the Macleods, though they quarrelled with
Alice, did not quarrel with her à l'outrance. They
snubbed herself and her chosen husband; but they did not so far
separate themselves from her and her affairs as to give up the charge
of her possessions. Her four hundred a year was settled very closely
on herself and on her children, without even a life interest having
been given to Mr Vavasor, and therefore when she died the mother's
fortune became the property of the little baby. But, under these
circumstances, the big people did not refuse to interest themselves to
some extent on behalf of the father. I do not suppose that any actual
agreement or compact was made between Mr Vavasor and the Macleods; but
it came to be understood between them that if he made no demand upon
them for his daughter's money, and allowed them to have charge of her
education, they would do something for him. He was a practising
barrister, though his practice had never amounted to much; and a
practising barrister is always supposed to be capable of filling any
situation which may come in his way. Two years after his wife's death
Mr Vavasor was appointed assistant commissioner in some office which
had to do with insolvents, and which was abolished three years after
his appointment. It was at first thought that he would keep his eight
hundred a year for life and be required to do nothing for it; but a
wretched cheeseparing Whig government, as John Vavasor called it when
describing the circumstances of the arrangement to his father, down in
Westmoreland, would not permit this; it gave him the option of taking
four hundred a year for doing nothing, or of keeping his whole income
and attending three days a week for three hours a day during term
time, at a miserable dingy little office near Chancery Lane, where his
duty would consist in signing his name to accounts which he never
read, and at which he was never supposed even to look. He had sulkily
elected to keep the money, and this signing had now been for nearly
twenty years the business of his life. Of course he considered himself
to be a very hardly-used man. One Lord Chancellor after another he
petitioned, begging that he might be relieved from the cruelty of his
position, and allowed to take his salary without doing anything in
return for it. The amount of work which he did perform was certainly a
minimum of labour. Term time, as terms were counted in Mr Vavasor's
office, hardly comprised half the year, and the hours of weekly
attendance did not do more than make one work a week for a
working man; but Mr Vavasor had been appointed an assistant
commissioner, and with every Lord Chancellor he argued that all
Westminster Hall, and Lincoln's Inn to boot, had no right to call upon
him to degrade himself by signing his name to accounts. In answer to
every memorial he was offered the alternative of freedom with half his
income; and so the thing went on.

There can, however, be no doubt that Mr Vavasor was better
off—and happier with his almost nominal employment than he would
have been without it. He always argued that it kept him in London; but
he would undoubtedly have lived in London with or without his official
occupation. He had become so habituated to London life in a small way,
before the choice of leaving London was open to him, that nothing
would have kept him long away from it. After his wife's death he dined
at his club every day on which a dinner was not given to him by some
friend elsewhere, and was rarely happy except when so dining. They who
have seen him scanning the steward's list of dishes, and giving the
necessary orders for his own and his friend's dinner, at about half
past four in the afternoon, have seen John Vavasor at the only moment
of the day at which he is ever much in earnest. All other things are
light and easy to him—to be taken easily and to be dismissed
easily. Even the eating of the dinner calls forth from him no special
sign of energy. Sometimes a frown will gather on his brow as he tastes
the first half glass from his bottle of claret; but as a rule that
which he has prepared for himself with so much elaborate care, is
consumed with only pleasant enjoyment. Now and again it will happen
that the cook is treacherous even to him, and then he can hit hard;
but in hitting he is quiet, and strikes with a smile on his face.

Such had been Mr Vavasor's pursuits and pleasures in life up to the
time at which my story commences. But I must not allow the reader to
suppose that he was a man without good qualities. Had he when young
possessed the gift of industry I think that he might have shone in his
profession, and have been well spoken of and esteemed in the world. As
it was he was a discontented man, but nevertheless he was popular, and
to some extent esteemed. He was liberal as far as his means would
permit; he was a man of his word; and he understood well that code of
by-laws which was presumed to constitute the character of a gentleman
in his circle. He knew how to carry himself well among men, and
understood thoroughly what might be said, and what might not; what
might be done among those with whom he lived, and what should be left
undone. By nature, too, he was kindly disposed, loving many persons a
little if he loved few or none passionately. Moreover, at the age of
fifty, he was a handsome man, with a fine forehead, round which the
hair and beard was only beginning to show itself to be grey. He stood
well, with a large person, only now ...