Time passed on. Annie had been married a year or more. Truth to say, she was somewhat ennuyée at present. Her husband resided chiefly on his estate, and this was at some distance from Estcourt Hall. There was little society in the neighborhood, and Sir Philip's tastes corresponded very little with her own.
The young baronet was perfectly well-intentioned, but neither refined nor cultivated. The society of his farm-bailiff, the walk to the fatting-stalls, the talk about the respective fattening qualities of turnips and mangold-wurzels, the speculations on the relative value of farm-yard manure, of guano, or of soot, and dissertations whether each or all should be applied as top-dressing or should be worked into the soil; such were his occupations, and sooth to say, he excelled in the pursuits he had adopted. No beasts at Smithfield could show finer points than Sir Philip's: no farm was in finer model order: his tanks, his barns, his under-drainings, and his irrigations, together with his prize cattle of every description, were the admiration of the agricultural world. He was truly a "lord of the animal creation," and he prided himself on being so. Of intellectual culture he had small appreciation; but as he had great ideas of order, and deemed himself master by right of "the masculine being the most worthy gender," (which was the only idea he retained from his Latin grammar, that had been vainly endeavored to be flogged into him at school,) he would ill have brooked interference with his rights. To him, a wife was a necessary appendage, nothing more; as to allowing a woman to dictate to him, the thing was absurd. He was "a lord of creation," and though he wished the world to pay due respect to Lady Conway, because she was his wife, yet it is questionable whether he himself would have allowed a woman a voice on any [{338}] subject beyond those connected with domestic economy, and even here he reserved to himself the power of veto. He loved his wife, certainly, because he thought it was a part of his duty to do so; besides, he really had some sort of animal affection for her. Annie was well-made, of good birth, well-educated; to say the least, he was as proud of her as he had been of the animal which had won him the first prize at the Smithfield cattle-show. It was part of his system to have the best specimens of animal existence domesticated on his estate, and Annie did not disgrace his other stock.
But Annie; poor Annie! She was alone in the world, though surrounded by everything that could procure bodily ease or bodily enjoyment. She had horses to ride, she had a carriage to ride in, she had gardens and hot houses, plantations and shrubberies; but to her cultivated mind where was the response? To the poetry that strove within her for expression, where was the listener?
"The thought that cannot speak Whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it break!"
But Annie's was not a spirit to be easily broken. Naturally expressive, she would have sought interest even among the cottagers, had not her husband's jealousy forbidden it. He was a magnifico, and he liked not that his wife should be more popular than himself. He wished to gain the name of being a liberal benefactor to his laborers and cottagers, and would not share his reputation even with the being to whom he had plighted his faith for life. Annie was thus thrown on her own resources. Brought up intellectually, she found a resource in books; and though at times cast down, she rallied again, for youth is buoyant, elastic, hopeful, and a literary taste carries in itself a wonderful power of compensation. But Annie was no dreamer, and the ideas that suggested themselves demanded action, which as yet they were denied: yet Annie read on, and thought on. The time for action will one day surely come, she thought.
"Lady Conway," said Sir Philip one day at the breakfast table, "do you know any thing of a Mr. Alfred Brookbank?"
Annie almost started; she certainly changed color, but Sir Philip was not observing her; so she answered, "Yes—no—yes; that is, Sir Philip, the family lived at Estcourt, and sometimes visited at the Hall."
"He has bought old Gordon's land, and is about to become our dear neighbor."
"Indeed! How did he get the money? He was poor when I knew him."
"He has made very fortunate speculations in America; besides which he succeeds to his father's property".