As for her husband, he was no unusual type of his class. He had a great deal of the rough arrogance which characterises it. When he was among his neighbours it got him ill-will, but still he could hold his own among them; domineering over the gentler sort, tyrannical to his servants, but only altogether unjust and unkind to those who were weak and in subjection to him. It was his own family who felt this most. For women he had an absolute contempt, unveiled by any of those polite pretences with which ordinary men holding this opinion sometimes consent to conceal it from motives of general expediency. His wife had been to him a pretty lass, for whom he had a passion _dans le temps_, and whom he had been rather proud to win, at the moment, as a lady and full of dainty ways, superior to those of the other pretty lasses in his sphere. It was right and natural that he, a Joscelyn, should have a lady for his wife, one who would not have looked at any other yeoman in the county, and who, indeed, had refused one or two better matches than himself for his sake. He knew that it was a fine thing to be a Joscelyn, though he did not know very well in what this consisted. It entitled him to be called Ralph Joscelyn, Esq., of the White House, when the other rough Dalesmen had scarcely so much as a Mr. to their names, and it gave him a general vague sense of superiority and of personal elation, as a man made of a different stuff from that out of which his neighbours were shaped. But though he was proud of this, he knew nothing about it. He was just as capable of investigating into “the old Joscelyns,” and tracing them to their real origin, as he was of exploring the sources of the Nile. He did not know, even, what it was which made it such an advantage to him to belong to those old Joscelyns, but he accepted it as a benefit which was no doubt to be partially attributed to his own excellence and high qualities. After the first flush of youth was over, he considered his wife no longer as a lady whom it was a pride to have won, but as a creature belonging to him, like one of his dogs, but not so docile or invariably lovable as his dogs. They all followed and worshipped him obsequiously, whether he was kind to them or not, condoning all his contrary actions, and ready to receive a caress with overflowing gratitude, and forget the kick by which it had been preceded. Mrs. Joscelyn had not the sense of the dogs; she struggled for a time to get the place which her imagination had pictured--that of the poetical mate, the help-meet, the sharer of her husband’s life; and when sent “to heel” with a kick, she had not taken it as the dogs did, but allowed the dismay, the disenchantment, the consternation which overwhelmed her to be seen in her face. Since then Joscelyn had emancipated himself altogether from any bondage of affection or respect. He frankly despised the woman he owned; despised her for her weakness,