The vexation of this was, however, alleviated, when he reflected on the pliancy of Walter’s character, and he comforted himself with the idea that, as soon as a reasonable sacrifice of time had been made to decorum, he would be able to induce the natural to marry again. Shall we venture to say, it also occurred in the cogitations of his sordid ambition, that, as the infant was prematurely born, and was feeble and infirm, he entertained some hope it might die, and not interfere with the entailed destination of the general estate? But if, in hazarding this harsh supposition, we do him any injustice, it is certain that he began to think there was something in the current of human affairs over which he could acquire no control, and that, although, in pursuing so steadily the single purpose of recovering his family inheritance, his endeavours had, till this period, proved eminently successful, he yet saw, with dismay, that, from the moment other interests came to be blended with those which he considered so peculiarly his own, other causes also came into operation, and turned, in spite of all his hedging and prudence, the whole issue of his labours awry. He perceived that human power was set at naught by the natural course of things, and nothing produced a more painful conviction of the wrong he had committed against his first-born, than the frustration of his wishes by the misfortune which had befallen Walter. His reflections were also embittered from another source; by his parsimony he foresaw that, in the course of a few years, he would have been able, from his own funds, to have redeemed the Divethill without having had recourse to the excambio; and that the whole of the Kittlestonheugh might thus have been his own conquest, and, as such, without violating any of the usages of society, he might have commenced the entail with Charles. In a word, the death of Walter’s wife and the birth of the daughter disturbed all his schemes, and rent from roof to foundation the castles which he had been so long and so arduously building. But it is necessary that we should return to poor Walter, on whom the loss of his beloved Betty Bodle acted with the incitement of a new impulse, and produced a change of character that rendered him a far less tractable instrument than his father expected to find. CHAPTER XXXV The sorrow of Walter, after he had returned home, assumed the appearance of a calm and settled melancholy. He sat beside the corpse with his hands folded and his head drooping. He made no answer to any question; but as often as he heard the infant’s cry, he looked towards the bed, and said, with an accent of indescribable sadness, ‘My Betty Bodle!’