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
table at his wife: "I think these broth would be better to sweem in than
to sup." Or else to the butler: "Here, M'Killop, awa' wi' this Raadical
gigot - tak' it to the French, man, and bring me some puddocks! It
seems rather a sore kind of a business that I should be all day in Court
haanging Raadicals, and get nawthing to my denner.
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