Helen's scornful rejection of the proposal at first was scathing, and
little less her scorn of a parent who could urge it. "It's to save me
from want, and from worse than want," he whimpered. Finally, ere many
days had passed, wearied by her father's importunity, she gave her
consent.
A pair more ill-matched could not have been found; the man by nature
coarse, brutal, and cowardly; the woman, insolent, fearless, and of
ungoverned temper. From the first things went badly, and when, within a
week of the wedding, Helen's father was drowned in attempting to ford
the Tweed on horseback, she chose to consider that her part of the
bargain was ended. Henceforward she was a wife only in name. Bluster and
storm as he might, she was more than the master of her husband, and
after one wild outburst he cringed before her. And as, before her
marriage, the wife had insisted on reinstating the greater number of the
old servants, who to fidelity to the old line added hostility to a
master whom they looked on as an interloper, the husband soon found it
to his advantage to conciliate the household by giving way to the whims
of his wife. Thereafter, the two met, if at all, only at meals.
For something over a year things continued on this unpleasant footing.
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