They suffered deeply, with this difference--that Lady Bassett pined and Sir Charles Bassett fretted.
The woman's grief was more pure and profound than the man's.

If there had been no Richard Bassett in the world, still her bosom would have yearned and pined, and the great cry of Nature, "Give me children or I die," would have been in her heart, though it would never have risen to her lips.
Sir Charles had, of course, less of this profound instinct than his wife, but he had it too; only in him the feeling was adulterated and at the same time imbittered by one less simple and noble.

An enemy sat at his gate.

That enemy, whose enduring malice had at last begotten equal hostility in the childless baronet, was now married, and would probably have heirs; and, if so, that hateful brood--the spawn of an anonymous letter-writer--would surely inherit Bassett and Huntercombe, succeeding to Sir Charles Bassett, deceased without issue.

This chafed the childless man, and gradually undermined a temper habitually sweet, though subject, as we have seen, to violent ebullitions where the provocation was intolerable.