Sir Charles was often sad, sometimes indignant.
Lady Bassett excused each enormity with pathetic ingenuity; excused,
but suffered, and indeed pined visibly, for all this time he was
tormenting her as few women in her position have been tormented. Her
life was a struggle of contesting emotions; she was wounded, harassed,
perplexed, and so miserable, she would have welcomed death, that her
husband might read that Manuscript and cease to suffer, and she escape
the shame of confessing, and of living after it.
In one word, she was expiating.
Neither the excuses she made nor the misery she suffered escaped Sir
Charles.
He said to her at last, "My own Bella, this unhappy boy is killing you.
Dear as he is to me, you are dearer. I must send him away again."
"He saved our darling," said she, faintly, but she could say no more.
He had exhausted excuse.
Sir Charles made inquiries everywhere, and at last his attention was
drawn to the following advertisement in the _Times:_
UNMANAGEABLE, Backward, or other BOYS, carefully TRAINED, and EDUCATED,
by a married rector. Home comforts. Moderate terms. Address Dr.
Beecher, Fennymore, Cambridgeshire.
He wrote to this gentleman, and the correspondence was encouraging.
"These scapegraces," said the artist in tuition, "are like crab-trees;
abominable till you graft them, and then they bear the best fruit.
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