But all that was doing a great deal of harm to Nancy. It gradually
opened her eyes to the fact that Edward was a man with his ups
and downs and not an invariably gay uncle like a nice dog, a
trustworthy horse or a girl friend. She would find him in attitudes
of frightful dejection, sunk into his armchair in the study that was
half a gun-room. She would notice through the open door that his
face was the face of an old, dead man, when he had no one to talk
to. Gradually it forced itself upon her attention that there were
profound differences between the pair that she regarded a her
uncle and her aunt. It was a conviction that came very slowly.
It began with Edward's giving an oldish horse to a young fellow
called Selmes. Selmes' father had been ruined by fraudulent
solicitor and the Selmes family had had to sell their hunters. It
was a case that had excited a good deal of sympathy in that part of
the county. And Edward, meeting the young man one day,
unmounted, and seeing him to be very unhappy, had offered to
give him an old Irish cob upon which he was riding. It was a silly
sort of thing to do really. The horse was worth from thirty to forty
pounds and Edward might have known that the gift would upset
his wife.
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