So he ordered me to leave crying, which I behooved to obey; for he will be master, mind ye, while he have a finger to wag, poor dear gentleman, he will." And, soon after this, she resisted all his attempts to detain her, and scudded back to the house, leaving Bassett to his reflections, which were exceedingly bitter.
Sir Charles got better, and at last used to walk daily with Lady Bassett.

Their favorite stroll was up and down the lawn, close under the boundary wall he had built to shut out "The Heir's Walk." The afternoon sun struck warm upon that wall and the walk by its side.
On the other side a nurse often carried little Dicky Bassett, the heir; but neither of the promenaders could see each other for the wall.
Richard Bassett, on the contrary, from "The Heir's Tower," could see both these little parties; and, as some men cannot keep away from what causes their pain, he used to watch these loving walks, and see Sir Charles get stronger and stronger, till at last, instead of leaning on his beloved wife, he could march by her side, or even give her his arm.
Yet the picture was, in a great degree, delusive; for, except during these blissful walks, when the sun shone on him, and Love and Beauty soothed him, Sir Charles was not the man he had been.

The shake he had received appeared to have damaged his temper strangely.

He became so irritable that several of his servants left him; and to his wife he repined; and his childless condition, which had been hitherto only a deep disappointment, became in his eyes a calamity that outweighed his many blessings.

He had now narrowly escaped dying without an heir, and this seemed to sink into his mind, and, co-operating with the concussion his brain had received, brought him into a morbid state.