He ran the hounds and was a fine rider, though over-hard on his horses, with whom he was never on terms of intimate friendship. He esteemed them solely for their carrying capacities. He preserved, was a good shot, and free with his invitations to the less-happily situated. He was a jovial host and a hard drinker as was the fashion. He enjoyed seeing his friends at his table and under it. He was not a hard landlord, and this, and his generosity in the matter of compensation for hunt-damage, secured him the good-will of the country-side and palliated all else.
Morals were slack in those days, and no one would have thought for a moment of affronting Carew by calling him a moral man.
On the whole, Elinor paid a somewhat high price for the bodily comfort from which—according to the Jealous Jade—sulphurous language and an occasional blow were not lacking, and for the satisfaction of a worldly ambition which, if the gradual shadowing of her pretty face was anything to go by, had not brought her any great peace of mind.
III
Wulfrey Dale was a very general favourite. With men and women alike, quite irrespective of their station in life, his manner was irresistibly frank and charming. With the women it might be said to be almost unfortunately so.
He was so absolutely and unaffectedly sympathetic, so exclusively and devotedly interested in every woman he met, that it is hardly matter for wonder that in many quarters impressionable hearts beat high at his coming, and thought tenderly and hopefully of him when he had gone. That, too, in spite of the fact that their owners knew perfectly well that it was simply Wulf's way, as it had been his father's before him, and that neither of them could change his nature any more than he could change his skin or the colour of his eyes.
He took a deep and genuine human interest in every man, woman and child with whom he came into contact, and showed it. With men and children it made for good-fellowship and extraordinary confidence. The older folk all trusted young Wulfrey as they had all their lives trusted the old Doctor. The children would talk to him as between man and man, and with an artlessness and candour which as a rule obtained only among themselves. With the women it led in some cases to little affections of the heart—flutterings and burnings and barely-self-confessed disappointments, for which their owners, if honest in their searchings after truth, had to acknowledge that the blame lay entirely with themselves.
It was a time of hard drinking, hard riding, and quite superfluously strong language, but none the less, among the women-folk, of a sentiment which in these days of wider outlook and opportunity we should denominate as sickly. The blame was not all theirs.
So far Wulf had shown exceptional interest or favour in no direction, that is to say in all, and so none could claim to say with any certainty in which way the wind blew, or even if it blew at all.
Not a few held that Elinor Baynard's marriage with Pasley Carew had so wounded his affections that it was probable he would never marry, unless——. And therein lay strictly private grounds for hope in many a heart.