As a youth he had made a good thing of games of
skill, but did not pursue them as a means of profit when he no
longer needed the resource.
He married at the age of thirty. This, like every other step he
took, was well planned; his wife brought him several thousand
pounds, being the daughter of a retired publican with whom Woodstock
had had business relations.
Two years after his marriage was born his first and only child, a
girl whom they called Lotty. Lotty, as she grew up, gradually
developed an unfortunate combination of her parents' qualities; she
had her mother's weakness of mind, without her mother's moral sense,
and from her father she derived an ingrained stubbornness, which had
nothing in common with strength of character. Doubly unhappy was it
that she lost her mother so early; the loss deprived her of gentle
guidance during her youth, and left her without resource against her
father's coldness or harshness. The result was that the softer
elements of her character unavoidably degenerated and found
expression in qualities not at all admirable, whilst her obstinacy
grew the ally of the weakness from which she had most to fear.
Lotty was sent to a day-school till the age of thirteen, then had to
become her father's housekeeper.
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