Reading further, we discover the clue to his scorn of woman. The poor gentleman has been wronged upon his hearth, and is a widower while yet his wife lives. He once had a wife he loved devotedly, and a friend, a poet, whom he trusted. The one betrayed his love and the other his confidence. The story is not new, but novel indeed is its effect upon Sir Austin Feverel. Bankrupt in love and friendship, he fell upon bitterness. To keep his heart alive, while presenting a mask of indifference to intimates and relatives, he concentrated all his hopes upon his baby boy, and, for the child’s ultimate misfortune, resolved to found a system for his benefit. But he wishes his paternal tenderness to remain unsuspected by others, and dismisses the nurse who caught him sobbing over his son’s cradle. The inmates of Raynham are certainly a queer collection of specimens: Hippias, once thought to be the genius of the family, but a premature victim to strong appetites and a weak stomach, living in the embraces of dyspepsia, and engaged in a perpetual contention with his dinner. Algernon Feverel, whose career as a gentleman of the Guards lay in his legs, until it was irrevocably cut short by the loss of one on a cricket-ground, when he devoted himself to the direction of his nephew’s animal vigour ‘with a melancholy vivacity.’ A venerable lady, known as Great-Aunt Grantley, who spent the day preparing for dinner and the night in remembering it. Mrs. Doria Forey, the baronet’s eldest sister, who fixed herself at the Abbey with the intention of marrying her only daughter, Clare, to the Hope of Raynham. There are two other Feverel ladies, known as the mothers of two remarkable sons, one our delightful wise youth, Adrian Harley, and the other, Austin Wentworth, a noble youth, who had nobly redeemed a common fault in the lives of young men, by marriage, and ‘was condemned to undergo the world’s harsh judgment, not for the fault--for its atonement.’ ‘Adrian was noted for his sagacity, which carried the world, but brought him no friends. His problem for life was to satisfy his appetites without rashly staking his character.’ He was polished, luxurious, and happy at the cost of others, and, while pursuing the maids of earth, enjoyed a reputation for virtue. The world declared him moral and wise, ‘and the pleasing converse every way of his disgraced cousin Austin.’ And we ever greet him cordially, for all his vices, and the ‘edge to his smile, which cuts much like a sneer.’