In place of attaching any of her husband’s servants, Lady Bell had contrived to repel them from the beginning; for was not their idol, their own born and bred Squire, the reflection but slightly refined of their doltish and dour natures? And did not the young madam start by committing sacrilege against the idol, who, if you spoke him fair, and took a few fierce words—it might be blows—was not so bad an idol as times went. Squire Trevor had his good points, which his own people knew best. He was ready to make up, by a sort of crabbed justice, when the passion was off him, for his surliness of manners. He could take his bottle like the rest of the world, and even sit and soak himself into blind madness when he was brooding on any real or fancied wrong. But he did not squander his means on vain show or riotous living. He did not gamble away his paternal acres, and consign his dependants to wreck and ruin with himself, like many of his generation. Squire Trevor was considered somewhat of a model of squirearchical excellence down at Trevor Court, and Lady Bell by contrast a very naughty young lady indeed, a discontented, good-for-nothing Lon’oner, who took it upon her to be sullen or peevish, and did not at once set herself to please her husband by implicit obedience, and by all wifely arts as well as wifely virtues. Trevor Court was not out of count in its neighbourhood, but, except in doing his duty to society by keeping up rounds of visits on special occasions, Mr. Trevor did not care for going into or receiving company. He liked to know himself monarch of all he surveyed, and to be deferred to in like manner—heights of regard which he could hardly attain off his own land. Above all, Mr. Trevor objected to presenting an open door to the country, or to availing himself of other open doors, so soon as he had discovered that Lady Bell, after long abstinence from the society of young people like herself, could, when restored to it, abate her exclusiveness, and even relax into faint dimpling smiles. “By George!” he swore, “if she can’t smile on me and my honest household, she shan’t on a parcel of idle young rakes and impudent hussies in their questionable surroundings.” It was not unlikely that Squire Trevor had some reason in his decision. The standard of morals was low everywhere a century ago. There were many instances then of country houses in remote districts, as there are to-day of agricultural cottages in similar circumstances, which were more woefully corrupt than the worst town houses. But Lady Bell was incapable of comprehending such justification. She regarded the deprivation enforced on her as an additional injury and insult. And she was determined that if Mr. Trevor kept her a prisoner at Trevor Court, he should look on her face as that of a prisoner directed to her jailer. CHAPTER X. THE SUNDONS AND THE WALSHES.