As long as his wife, who had been much younger than he, lived he continued to hope for an heir; but upon the death of Lady Midharst, having ascertained the precise nature and import of the diseases from which he suffered, he made up his mind to give up all thought of an heir, and devote himself wholly to making a suitable provision for his daughter Maud, who was healthy and well-grown, and promised to be strong and long-lived. And now began with Sir Alexander Midharst the practices by which he disgraced his order, and made himself a byword for all who knew his habits and his name. He shut up his London house and advertised it to be let. A rich distiller took it furnished at two hundred pounds a month during the season, and a manufacturing jeweller for eighty pounds a month during the unfashionable periods of the year. He sold his horses and carriages, all save one old state coach, which he could not sell for two reasons; first, because its preservation and "maintenance" were provided for by his predecessors; and secondly, because no one would pay haulage for it from the Island to the city. He dismissed all his servants but the housekeeper, one maid, and one man, allowing, however, a nurse and "governess" for the baby, who yet lacked of three months. He resigned the membership of his two London clubs, of the three county clubs he belonged to, and intimated to all institutions or bodies or guilds to which he was patron, chairman, subscriber, or member, that his connection in any way with them must cease. He discharged his steward, and resolved upon collecting his own rents and superintending his own property. Up to this anyone who chose might go over his fine old Castle. Anyone still might go over the Castle, but an entrance fee of one shilling was now demanded from each sightseer. As time advanced, and he became more imbued with avarice, more expert in meanness, he cut and shaved and clipped here and there and everywhere, until he had reduced his expenditure to about a thousand a year. But he did not rest content with cutting down his own expenses; he was fully as careful to increase his income by every means in his power. When leases expired they were renewed only on payment of heavy fines. His care was not so much to inflate the rent-roll as to get in all the ready-money he could. He had, he calculated, only a few years, if so long, to live, and the rent-roll would then be the concern of that William Midharst whom he had never seen and whom he wished never to see. He cut down and sold all the timber as far as his right to do so extended; and all the trimming and underwood, which had previously been allowed to go as perquisites to the men or as gleaning among the poor, he took possession of and sold. He let the right of shooting over his land and the right of fishing in his streams and rivers. He sold off all he might of the more modern furniture at the Castle.